The Answer
by MillieBee
Summary: When Cloud messes with a prototype 'materia accelerator' in the ruins of Shinra HQ, he is sent back in time to when he first joined the Shinra Electric Power Company. He wants this second chance to count, but there are rules and they cannot be broken. Also, Zack is very distracting. Inspired by a quote from Doctor Who. Post-game, pre-AC, breaks CC canon. Gen.
1. A Non-Linear, Non-Subjective Viewpoint

**Chapter One**

'_People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… timey wimey… stuff.'_

Cloud charged down the stairs when the walls began to rattle. He tried to draw his sword on the way down, but the very task of twisting the enormous Buster Sword around his body in such a narrow passage, while hurrying forwards, almost tripped him over. He jumped the last few steps and landed on the ground floor with the Buster up and ready in front of him.

Marlene and Tifa's eyes were comically wide with the shock of having Seventh Heaven almost collapse on top of them. Cloud jerked his head towards the staircase.

'Get her upstairs,' he said. Tifa barely paused to nod; she scooped Marlene up and ran. With the little girl out of harm's way, Cloud crept to the door. He opened it a few inches; just enough to view what was happening outside.

'Ifrit,' he muttered, hearing Tifa's footsteps as she came back downstairs to help. It wasn't quite an Ifrit, though: the usually humanoid face of the summoned monster had been replaced with something more pig-like, upturned snout snorting and grunting at the little people around its feet. Fire elementals though they were, he'd also never seen an Ifrit look so comfortable on with its _entire_ body in flames.

'Big Ifrit,' Tifa noted simply, ducking under Cloud to peek at the monster through the gap. 'Ice materia?'

'Should work,' Cloud said, taking the materia she passed him and pocketing it. 'Let's go.'

They took a breath in unison, and then Cloud shoved the door open and they charged.

Most of the Edge's inhabitants were already hiding behind the sturdier buildings; the others were running for cover. It was a challenge just to get to the monster, weaving around the panicking people. One man grabbed Cloud's shoulder and screamed that he was going the _wrong way, idiot!_ and even tried to tussle with him for a few moments before a fire spell hit the ground near them and he gave up to save himself.

Tifa reached the creature first, but came to a scrambling halt when she realized that any kicks or punches thrown at something completely on fire would only end in her getting burned. She frantically dug a materia from her pocket and hurled a bolt spell. It hit and the Ifrit jumped, startled that the tiny people had actually managed to hurt it. Just as it turned its attentions on Tifa – who immediately turned _her _attentions on running the hell away from the next fire spell – Cloud got close enough to hit it with the ice spell. The monster made a yelping sound as deep as a thunderclap and swung around to attack Cloud instead, who threw the ice materia right over its head and steadied the Buster Sword out in front of his body.

Tifa had to make a dive to catch the thrown materia, skidding on her bare knees and tearing the skin open. She set the ice spell off the moment she had it in her hands. At the same time, Cloud ran forwards and swung the enormous Buster Sword at the Ifrit's legs. He was less careful about the fire than Tifa: sprinting between the creature's legs to land a heavier blow on its knees landed _him_ with burns all over his skin.

He managed not to yell in pain, and grabbed Tifa's arm as he continued to run, pulling her with him around the corner and behind a building just as a tidal wave of fire exploded across the street.

'I think we made it angry,' he said, fumbling with a restore materia. Tifa shoulder-barged a door open, grabbed his shirt and hauled him inside. He didn't manage to hold back the yelp of pain that time, as the cotton that had become welded to his skin was ripped away. He hadn't even noticed the Ifrit coming around the corner, but he felt the heat of another fiery attack against his burned cheek before Tifa slammed the door closed.

'Give me that,' Tifa said, taking the restore materia from Cloud's blistered red and slightly shaky fingers and casting the cure spell. Cloud sighed and slumped against the wall as the worst of his burns were washed away.

'Your knees,' he said, indicating the blood dripping down Tifa's calves.

'Later,' she replied simply, because then the Ifrit's enormous clawed hand tore through the doorway and started pulling bricks apart like a child with a sandcastle. Tifa set an ice spell on it, and then marched forward as it stumbled back and cast another. Cloud took a bracing breath and hefted up the Buster Sword.

'What I wouldn't give for a white mage…'

He slipped out of the wrecked doorway and faced up to the creature. Tifa was advancing on it, casting one ice spell after another without giving it room to fight back. The fire on its body started to sputter. Its chest, where most of the spells were hitting, was accumulating a thin layer of frost.

Cloud came up past Tifa and started hacking at the creature's – now less fiery and therefore safely targetable – legs. The Ifrit let out howl after howl of pain and frustration, trying to simultaneously claw Cloud away from its ankles and avoid Tifa's materia attacks. It was stumbling; they had it down to its last legs – literally: it was hopping on one foot to avoid further hurting the mangled stump of the other – when Tifa cast a final ice spell with a shout of victory.

And nothing happened.

The materia made a weak fizzing sound and died. The Ifrit stumbled against a building and tried to get its balance as there was a sudden halt in the onslaught. Cloud and Tifa shared a slow look of horror just as the clouds seemed to break on the Ifrit's fate and sunlight shone on its chances of living long enough to destroy everything within sight.

Tifa, drained of magic, lobbed the materia back at Cloud and ran for her life as the furious Ifrit began to return her attacks. Stomping after the woman with a vengeance (wincing slightly with every other step), the Ifrit seemed to have forgotten that it was actually fighting _two_ people. Cloud caught the materia and sent the biggest ice spell he could conjure straight at the monster's back.

It stopped in its tracks with a bellow and whipped around to face Cloud, who steadied the Buster Sword.

The Ifrit teetered for a moment, as though preparing to take a leap. Cloud glanced to his sides and really hoped he could run fast enough to avoid being crushed. Then the Ifrit's eyes rolled right up behind the lids, it teetered over backwards and it crashed to the ground.

Cloud remained in his fighting stance for just a few moments after the Ifrit's demise, as through petrified in place. When the ground finished shaking, he relaxed and swung the Buster Sword back up onto his back, where it clipped to its harness with a _clunk_.

'That was—Tifa?'

She was sprawled on the ground behind the Ifrit, face-down. Her legs were burned black. The lower end of her long, ponytailed hair was still on fire.

'Tifa! _Tifa_!'

He ran to her faster than he'd run for the whole of the fight with the Ifrit. Gently, he rolled her onto her back. Her mouth was hanging open slightly but her eyes were closed, as though she was frozen in the shout of pain he hadn't heard. He pressed two fingers to her throat.

'Tifa! Tifa, can you hear me? _Tifa_!'

Nothing. No pulse. For a moment, Cloud thought his pulse had stopped too. He rifled through his pockets, throwing out half a dozen potions and several ability materia before getting hold of a phoenix down. He tore the cork out of the bottle with his teeth and tipped the tiny red feather straight on to Tifa's face. It touched her cheek and she jerked upright and clutched Cloud's shoulders, somehow managing to gasp and scream at the same time.

After a moment, she slouched back.

'I—' (she hiccoughed), 'I hate doing that.'

'Dying?' Cloud said. 'I don't think it's anyone's favourite pastime.'

Tifa only hiccoughed in response. She looked around and noticed the fallen Ifrit, smiled with relief, pointed, opened her mouth to say something, and hiccoughed again.

She gave Cloud a thumbs-up.

* * *

'Remind me why the fuck I'm here again,' Cid muttered, stepping through the debris that had once been Midgar.

'Monsters,' Cloud said simply, and received a look of profound loathing. Noticing this, Tifa chose to take responsibility for the explanations.

'It was expected that mako leaks in Midgar might cause animal or human mutations,' she said. 'That's why Edge had to built so far away: to avoid the contamination area. But we've been seeing way bigger and way more monsters than we'd anticipated; almost more than we can handle. Last weekend we fought a mutated Ifrit, and it tore down half of the streets around Seventh Heaven. People think there might be something wrong with the reactors… none of them are running, obviously, but it could be something else. They were each built with a special lockdown mode in case something went wrong, and that's how they _should_ be now. We locked them down when we started building Edge, but we think one of them's malfunctioning, so even _more_ mako is leaking out than usual. Probably just an animal sat on the controls at Shinra HQ and they need to be set right again.'

'So,' Cid summarised, 'I'm here because _lots_ of monsters.'

Tifa thought for a moment.

'Yes,' she said.

They continued to pick their way through the ruins of Midgar for a few more moments before Cid added,

'And why me?'

Cloud and Tifa shrugged, but the honest answer was that Cid had been a godsend. He'd 'dropped by' Midgar in the airship to check on them, something it seemed the gruff man had been doing with everyone from their party (although any suggestion that he might be doing so out of concern for his friends was met with a torrent of curses). With Barret halfway across the Planet looking for oil, Cid had instantly been enlisted into their _Check the Reactors Haven't Gone Into Meltdown_ team.

'Don't see why I couldn't have stayed at fuckin' home and babysat the damn kid,' Cid grumbled. 'She fucking loves me.'

Tifa looked faintly alarmed at Cid's idea of Marlene 'loving' him – he had almost put her in tears because she didn't know how to make tea just a few hours ago – before realising that he probably wasn't being serious. He would have hated looking after Marlene and he knew it. He just liked to complain.

Getting to the centre of Midgar was challenge enough. Once at the centre, the three of them looked up at the towering, broken remains of the Shinra Headquarters and grimaced. The front door was fifty feet above them.

'Well,' Cloud said, 'better get climbing.'

It took them three quarters of an hour. The first quarter was filled with the – actually rather comforting – sounds of Cid's swearing. With Cid doing it all for him, Cloud felt less inclined to curse himself and saved his breath for the climb. By the second quarter, Cid's breathlessness resigned him to only the odd bark of cussing whenever his hands or feet slipped. The third quarter was eerily quiet. When Cloud turned a concerned eye on Cid, he realised that the older man had resigned himself to silently mouthing his curses so that he could keep them going in a constant stream.

'That wasn't so bad,' Tifa said brightly upon arriving at the top of the climb, where a small section of the plate was still standing, jutting out in a ring all around the headquarters. Cid, gasping for breath, said nothing, but glared at her with enough strength to make his message clear: _I still have the strength to wring your neck if you say one more chipper thing today._

'Umm… best get looking,' Tifa added. Cloud decided to stand in between the pair of them, just in case Tifa did decide to chipper up again.

The door didn't need opening. It had been kicked down on the previous visit, during Edge's early construction. Cid pressed the button by the lift doors, but his belief that they would still work was optimistic at best. There was a heavy _clunk_ from somewhere in the building and the lift doors opened to an empty shaft. The snapped wires of the lift dangled in front of his face.

'Oh fuck this.' Cid lit up a cigarette and followed Cloud and Tifa, who were already halfway up the stairs to the next floor.

Even the building's interior was in ruins. Although he made no comment and kept an expression of disinterest, Cloud felt a little ache in his chest to see the place where he'd once lived and worked in such a state. It was still difficult to remember sometimes which memories were real, but he was sure he'd once lived in the barracks on _this_ floor, and practised his shooting on _this_ one… he hadn't been allowed all the way up to the SOLDIER's floors, but he'd spent two years of his life around the floors below.

'Floor 30. This is the one,' he said. Again, the door had been kicked down on the previous visit.

Floor 30 was crammed with rows of electronic consoles. Little lights were still flickering around the various buttons. Display screens indicated rises and falls in power and whatever else; most of it was incomprehensible.

'Hey,' Cid muttered as Cloud picked out a console and started reading the dials, 'if the power's still on, what the fuck's with all the kicked-in doors?'

'Reeve helped us direct all the emergency power to this floor; I'm not sure the doors work anymore,' Tifa said. 'And also literally kicking Shinra's doors down was the most satisfying feeling ever.'

Cid grinned, clamping his teeth around his cigarette. Tifa was immediately forgiven all crimes of chipperness, and they joined Cloud in checking over the consoles. Cloud and Tifa started to mutter between themselves, offering information about each console as they passed it and discussing any differences in the information shown and whether those differences meant anything. Cid, who had not been lucky enough to learn from Reeve what any of the consoles were for, spent five minutes staring blankly at numbers and dials before wandering off to play with other things.

'Where's this go?'

The other two looked up from their consoles and blankly at the door Cid had pointed out. Cloud shrugged and Tifa shook her head.

'Don't know. Probably more stuff to do with the reactors,' Cloud said. 'Reeve never said it was important.'

'Well there could be a God damn monster building machine in there,' Cid, who was apparently desperately bored, suggested.

'You two look,' Tifa said, going back to her console. 'I can do this on my own for now.'

Cloud nodded and wandered over to Cid. There was nothing unusual about the door: no warning signs suggesting that there was anything radioactive behind it. Cid gave Cloud a look of gratitude, and then moved aside when he realised that Cloud was stepping back to take a run-up.

The door didn't fall down when he kicked it. It burst into the next room and crashed against the far wall hard enough to leave a dent.

'Hmm,' Cloud said, peering around the dimly lit room. 'No monster building machine.'

'The fuck is that?' Cid said.

They wandered further into the room and Cloud found a light switch. It took three or four flicks before the lights actually turned on, and then they buzzed ominously.

The front of the room was a thin platform, which they were standing upon. Tables covered in papers were lined up along the wall. A few monitors were tucked in the corner, which Cid glanced at in disgust.

The majority of the room, however, was set a little below the platform. The space was taken up entirely by an enormous circular tube, built in a big loop. The tube was wide enough for someone to fit their arm down, and long enough that the tubing at the far end of the room looked only as thick as spaghetti. It looked, overall, like somebody had gone slightly mad with a length of drain pipes.

Cloud picked one of the papers up from a table at random.

'"Materia Accelerator",' he read. A few moment's of scanning later, he added: 'It looks like they were trying to mash different types of materia together to make new spells.'

'Huh,' Cid said. There was a pause. 'Would that work?'

'I have no idea,' Cloud said honestly. 'I thought Materia Development was up on the higher floors. Why were they doing it down here?'

He flicked through a few more sheaves of paper while Cid went to inspect the tube machine.

'Looks like it was shut down pretty quickly,' Cloud said, waving a notice for funding cuts in Cid's direction. 'Things didn't go the way they planned…'

'Oh!' Tifa suddenly cried from the other room. Cid and Cloud glanced up.

'I'll go see what she's got,' Cid said. 'Ain't nothing interesting in here, anyway.'

Cid stomped out but Cloud continued to read through the papers. He had to disagree with his teammate; this machine was plenty interesting. None of the reports really described what had happened when the machine was turned on. There were a lot of theoretical explanations for what _should_ happen and what they _wanted _to happen, and a lot of build up to the day that it _would_ be turned on, but it seemed as though the machine had only been used once, and the results had been so disappointing they hadn't deserved a mention.

Cloud dug around in his pockets for a moment and started sorting through his materia.

'Either of you have a restore materia?' he called to his friends through the door.

'I got one.'

'I have one too! Are you okay?'

'Fine. Everything's fine.'

Now he wouldn't feel so guilty about using his. He picked out a time materia as well; he knew he had another of those at home somewhere. Judging by the unimpressed reports in the papers, nothing was going to happen anyway. Still, he felt he'd rather not waste something too precious just for the sake of curiosity.

There was a little opening in the top of the tube near the platform. He placed the restore materia inside, and pulled one of the levers on the console. For a moment nothing happened, and Cloud thought he knew what the report's disappointment had been all about. Then, with a sputter, the machine seemed to wake up. The materia was whisked away from the opening and along the tube.

Cloud went back to the papers and scanned them again. He checked the dials on the console.

He pulled a second lever down and dropped the time materia in the slot. It shot away in the other direction to the first. The machine began to roar a little more loudly.

There was a crash at the far end of the tube, and then it exploded open in a burst of fire. Cloud felt a punch in his chest and was lifted up off of his feet, eyes stinging, ears whooshing. The walls seemed to warp and tear apart. He braced for a heavy, graceless landing.

It didn't come.

* * *

Everything was soft and white. Cloud couldn't feel any of his limbs. He was floating, getting a feeling almost like seasickness, but rather less unpleasant.

_Oh Planet I've died,_ he thought. _I've survived the apocalypse and fought the world's most dangerous psychopathic warrior twice and now I've died playing with a stupid materia machine._

The panic wore off gradually, and Cloud slowly realised that he had experienced this feeling once before. The weightlessness, the blindness… he had mako poisoning. This was how he'd felt when Zack was recuing him from Hojo's laboratory, when he'd barely been able to concentrate on the world.

He tried to take a breath. Nothing. He couldn't feel his lungs.

Well, that wasn't good. He really, really needed to breathe. That was important.

_Tifa, please for the love of the Planet find my burned, bloody corpse and use a phoenix down on it,_ he thought. _You owe me one._

_**Cloud Strife, you are not dying.**_

If he still had working nerves in his arms, Cloud would have reached for his sword. Instead he could only hang wherever he was, and be slightly relieved. He'd heard voices in his head before. This one didn't sound like Sephiroth or Jenova, so he decided he might has well trust it for now.

_Where am I?_

_**You are in the Lifestream.**_

Oh, well that made perfect sense.

_Why am I in the Lifestream if I'm not dead?_

_**You are travelling.**_

_Travelling where?_

_**You are travelling to fourteen.**_

The voice was starting to sound familiar, but the flat, dead tone it carried made it difficult to place. He wondered where he'd heard it before.

_To fourteen? What's fourteen? What're you talking abou—_

_**You will be as you were. You may not tell anyone what will be. You may change only one life. These are the rules. Breaking of the rules ends the chance. Do you understand?**_

_No! No, what's going on?_

_**You are travelling to fourteen. You will be as you were. You may not tell anyone what will be. You may change only one life. These are the rules. Breaking of the rules ends the chance. Do you understand?**_

Suddenly he knew whose voice it was.

_Aerith?_

_**Do you understand?**_

_No. Yes. Whatever. Aerith, is that you?_

_**You are here.**_

_No, wait! Wait Aerith! Ae—_

'—rith! Aerith!'


	2. This is Not One of Them

**Chapter Two**

'_There are fixed points throughout time where things must stay exactly the way they are. This is not one of them. This is an opportunity! Whatever happens here will create its own timeline, its own reality, a temporal tipping point. The future revolves around you, here, now, so do good!'_

_No, wait! Wait Aerith! Ae—_

'—rith! Aerith!'

He could feel his limbs again, but the sudden reappearance of the weight of his body came as a shock to them. His knees buckled and he fell down.

'Hey kid, are you all right?'

Cloud tried to answer them, but everything was still swirling in white and mako-green; he could barely see the face of the man squatting down to ask what had happened to him. He couldn't see anything else around it. He faintly heard someone mention something about getting a doctor, and then he blacked out.

It was a real blackout this time: no voices, no Lifestream. Cloud was reasonably accustomed to being knocked out, so the darkness came frankly as a relief.

He woke up somewhere soft, with no weight on his limbs. He shifted a little and felt a pillow behind his head, and when he opened his eyes he found that the swirls of mako had faded into a faint green tinge over his vision.

'Oh! Hey nurse, he's waking up!'

Cloud was in the infirmary. The Shinra Headquarters Infirmary. He looked around blearily. There was no dust anywhere, no rubble, no sign that the place had been hit with a meteor and left to fester for over a year. Everything was spotless. The sheets of the bed he lay in were pristinely white, the floors and walls clean and shining. The nurse suddenly bending over him wore a uniform starched into submission and lavender perfume.

'Can you hear me, Mister Strife?

'Y-yeah,' he said. With a little effort, he managed to sit upright. The room tipped sideways and then swayed back again. He groaned and pressed a hand to his forehead.

'You took quite a turn, Mister Strife,' the nurse said. 'Your friend said you fainted very suddenly.'

'My… friend?' Cloud stared blankly. This was too much.

'The infantryman guarding Floor 20 with you,' the nurse said slowly. 'Mister Strife, can you tell me your full name?'

'Uh… Cloud Strife.'

'Do you know where you are?'

'The Shinra HQ?'

'Yes that's right. Tell me the year.' The nurse was pinching his wrist and counting out his pulse on her wristwatch.

'It's 2008.'

The nurse stared at him for a long time.

'No,' she said. 'No, Cloud: it's 2000. Do you understand?'

Cloud went quiet, trying to comprehend the question that he had already been asked several times in the Lifestream. The room swung from side-to-side a few more times and her face blurred a little. It was the year 2000. No, she _thought_ it was 2000. She must have been insane, he decided. Some insane woman was keeping the Shinra HQ Infirmary tidy because she hadn't realised the upper floors had been blown up and Midgar had been totalled my a meteor.

'No,' he said finally.

She sighed and took a thermometer out of her pocket.

'Probably a mild concussion,' she said, sticking it none too gently in Cloud's mouth. 'Do you know how you fainted? Do you remember how you got here?'

'Materia accelerator sent me to the Lifestream,' Cloud muttered around the thermometer. The nurse was silent for a moment.

'Concussion,' she said conclusively. 'I'd better do a blood test, too. Give me a shout when the thermometer beeps. And keep hold of this.'

She dumped a cardboard bowl on his lap, and darted away – probably to get some nice, big needles to stick in him. Cloud shuddered, and then slumped back against the headboard. What in sweet hell had happened to him? Why was there a madwoman trying to run an infirmary in a broken building? What in the world had Aerith been saying in the Lifestream?

'Fainting on duty huh? That's got to suck.'

Why could he hear Zack in his head?

'I did that once. Guess it doesn't count if you're passing out drunk, though.'

Cloud felt all of his muscles petrify at once.

That wasn't in his head.

He turned slowly, agonisingly, to look at the man in the next bed along – the man who had shouted for the nurse not five minutes ago. A mass of wild black hair spiked out around the bloody bandages wrapped around his forehead. It was cut shorter than Cloud remembered it, and he didn't have the scar on his cheek yet, but he was wearing the uniform of a SOLDIER and his eyes were so green they pierced right through the veil over Cloud's eyesight.

'Z-Zack?'

Zack Fair tipped his head sideways like a confused puppy.

'Have we met?'

'You're alive,' Cloud said. 'I'm in Shinra and you're alive and—'

He finished his sentence with a groan as the room swerved more violently than ever before and the contents of his stomach hurled up and out of his mouth. Now he knew what the cardboard bowl was for.

He set it aside with shaky hands.

'Back to fourteen,' he muttered, finally understanding. 'Back to when _I_ was fourteen. I've… I've just joined Shinra!'

'Good for you,' Zack said, looking on in bewilderment. 'I think your first glorious contribution to the company should be taking a day off.'

Everything Aerith had said in the Lifestream made sense now. What were the rules? 'You may not tell anyone what will be'? Well, that was fairly obvious. He wasn't allowed to tell people about Meteor, or Sephiroth—

Sephiroth.

Sephiroth was still alive. And sane. Or, at least, as sane as Sephiroth had ever been. He was alive and he hadn't killed anybody yet, and he was almost definitely not expecting an attack from one of the Shinra infantrymen he walked past on a daily basis. If Cloud could find him, and kill him… he could change everything. This must have been why Aerith had sent him back. Cloud could save her, and Zack as well, and countless other lives. Everyone in Nibelheim could be saved before they even knew what they were in danger from.

The epiphany hit Cloud so hard he literally reeled from it, unable to do anything for some time but sit and stare with enormous eyes at the wall in front of him. Everything was going to be okay. He'd been given a second chance, and he could fix all the things that went wrong the first time.

Starting with Sephiroth.

The nurse came bustling back with a tray of medical equipment. There were several long needles in crinkling plastic packets.

'Okay, Mister Strife, let's do that blood test,' she said cheerfully. Cloud looked at her more carefully. She was blissfully unaware of what was coming. He wondered how long she was going to last; if she would stay with Shinra right until the end or if she'd leave; maybe find a better job somewhere else. Looking at the size of the needle she was unwrapping, he hoped rather bitterly that she got blown up.

'How was your temperature?' she asked. 'I told you to call me if it—'

Inside the cardboard bowl, the thermometer started beeping.

She hesitated.

'Oh,' she said. 'I'll… I'll get you another one in a moment.'

While she busied herself taking several bottles of Cloud's blood – why they needed so much he had no idea; perhaps the President fed on it – Cloud turned back to Zack. The older man was looking back warily.

'Sorry,' Cloud said. 'I'm… err. I don't feel so good.'

'You're telling me,' Zack replied. Cloud smiled and pointed with the arm not full of needle at Zack's bandaged head.

'How'd you manage that?'

Zack scratched at the back of his head – away from the bandages, Cloud noticed.

'My monthly games night went a bit crazier than usual,' he admitted.

'So you passed out drunk and hit your head,' Cloud said. Zack held his hands up as though in self defence.

'No, no! Next games night's not for another week. Sephiroth found out about the cactuars we'd smuggled in _last month_ and… well, you have to run six feet to get out of the way of that sword. Six feet is a long way with a First Class SOLDIER's fury right behind you.'

Cloud chuckled, trying to ignore that his heart was punching the inside of his chest. The nurse squeaked as the blood she was collecting began to flow a lot more freely than before.

'You know Sephiroth?' he said. Zack 'pfft' and rolled his eyes.

'Who _doesn't_ know Sephiroth? Man's a legend,' he said. 'But, as it happens, he does know me a _little_ better than the other SOLDIERs. He'll probably be calling on me later to tell me what a drunken degenerate I am and how I should be bettering myself as an example to everyone looking towards Shinra as a beacon of hope and glory.'

Cloud was blank. Zack winked.

'I can make it so he has to say at least… five words to you. Just don't hug him or ask for an autograph. The last guys found that out the hard way.' He paused. 'I miss Neil.'

'Okay,' the nurse announced happily. 'Just running a few quick scans on the blood sample; we'll know if there's something wrong in just a… what the?'

Cloud turned back to her. The room was looking significantly less green now. In her normal shade, the woman was far more attractive, and now he thought about it the needles hadn't really hurt that much. He took back what he'd thought about hoping she got blown up.

'What?' he said. She turned to him with an expression in equal parts of awe and disgust.

'Mister Strife, your blood is flooded with mako.'

'Oh.' He stared back. 'It is?'

'It's no wonder you fainted; you're lucky to be alive.' She glanced back at the samples of blood. 'Or at least, you were. The mako's leaving your system so fast it's barely even present in the last sample. What on the Planet have you been playing with?'

Cloud stared.

'Umm,' he said. Zack laughed.

'Same thing happened to me when I swallowed an all materia once,' he said. 'I was a Golden God for about twenty minutes and then it all evaporated out of my system and I couldn't get up off the floor for a week.'

Cloud looked at the nurse pleadingly.

'I didn't swallow an all materia,' he said.

'I'm sure,' she said. 'I'm going to go and get a doctor to have a look at you. You just… wait there a moment.'

While she bustled off again, another, older nurse came in to check over Zack's head wound. There was barely a mark on his skin under the bandages, despite the fact that there was enough blood on the dressing to suggest he'd hacked an ear off.

'You're looking fine, Mister Fair,' the old nurse said. 'How do you feel?'

'Great,' Zack said brightly. 'Can't keep a SOLDIER down for long!'

'You certainly can't,' she chuckled. 'I think I can safely send you away now. Mister Sephiroth has been sending one messenger after another to ask about your recovery. He wants to see you straight away; seems he's quite concerned.'

Zack rolled his eyes.

'Concerned he hit me so hard he won't be allowed to hit me again,' he muttered, but he thanked the nurse anyway and hopped up to leave.

'Wait!' Cloud said, staggering out of his own bed. Zack hesitated, but he looked more like he'd done it in case he needed to catch Cloud if he fainted again than because he'd been asked.

'You're going to see Sephiroth?' he said. Zack stared.

'I am going to have my head beaten in by Sephiroth, yes.'

'Take me with you.'

Zack's eyes travelled slowly down to Cloud's feet and back up again. He did not look particularly impressed with what he saw.

'You've got to be kidding.'

'I'm fine. And… and I've got an important message for him,' Cloud said quickly. Zack rested his hands on his hips.

'Really?'

'Yes.'

Cloud tried very hard to look earnest. Zack sniggered.

'You're a crap liar, but I like the persistence,' he said. 'Come on, then. Try not to throw up on me. Take one of those bowls with you.'

* * *

Cloud had not been completely lying when he said he felt fine. He did feel a lot better; enough that he was capable of keeping up with Zack's long strides all the way through the Shinra building. He didn't remember Zack being absurdly tall, but he must have been, because Cloud never usually had to _scurry_ to keep up with anyone.

If Zack had doubted that Cloud was new to Shinra, he couldn't anymore. Cloud peered in every direction with wide, lost eyes, and no idea of how much he looked like the brand-new recruit that he as supposed to be as he tried dizzily to take in all of the things he'd forgotten.

People breezed past him in suits, lab coats and SOLDIER uniforms. MPs in clunky helmets guarded several of the doors on each floor, as though Shinra thought that their keycard security system wasn't enough.

Had he not been so stunned, he might have laughed, knowing that even the extra infantrymen would not be enough to stop Avalanche breaking in.

Zack opened the door to Floor 49 and Cloud followed inches behind him.

'_Hey_ there, survivor!' a redheaded man in a suit called, jumping up as Zack came in. Cloud had to look at him twice – not because he didn't recognise him, but because he couldn't believe he _did_. Minus a ponytail, Reno looked completely identical to his future counterpart. How did a man frequently caught in gunfights fail to age a day or even acquire any facial scars over almost ten years?

'Ye of little faith,' Zack tutted. 'Of course I'm a survivor. Seph won't kill me; he couldn't live without me.'

'Ha! Sure. Sephiroth has been demanding you go see him for _four hours_ now. I think he's been working up a vengeance. Probably wanted to start at your feet this time; cut you up into little bits before he eats you. You might want this.' Reno offered Zack a familiar sword. It had been resting up against the wall, and he kept the tip against the ground and just rocked the handle of it towards Zack so he wouldn't have to lift it.

'Huh. I thought you'd have sold this by now,' Zack said, taking the Buster Sword and swinging it easily up onto his back. Cloud ducked out of the way to avoid being cleaved in half.

'Couldn't be arsed to carry the damn thing,' Reno said, and then pointed at Cloud. 'What's that?'

'This is Cloud, my new best friend and also my meat shield,' Zack said, dragging Cloud up in front of himself in demonstration. 'Also, Cloud is a person. That makes him a "who", technically.'

Cloud's face must have been hilarious, because Reno was smirking. He supposed that faces were hilarious when they didn't know whether to be terrified or grateful.

'Whatever, yo,' Reno said. 'If you die this time, I'm taking all your shit.'

Zack had not been joking about using Cloud as a human body shield. He pushed him into Sephiroth's office first and then ducked in behind him.

Cloud stiffened as a silver blade flashed forwards and halted right in front of his face. His eyes followed the length of the sword – all seven feet of it – to its leather clad owner, and that was when his brain gave up.

Silver hair swaying slightly after his sudden movement, there was Sephiroth. Sephiroth, whom Cloud had last seen ghastly white and bloody, bags under his mad eyes, the feathers of half a dozen torn white wings littering his feet. Sephiroth: the madman. Sephiroth: the enemy.

Sephiroth: the looking very ticked off but otherwise sane and healthy, pointing Masamune at Cloud's nose.

'What is this?' he said, peering at Cloud without recognition, as if he was unfamiliar bug he'd rather like to squash. Behind Cloud, Zack groaned softly.

'What _is_ it with you people and pronouns? Cloud is a "who", not a "what".'

'If he is deserving of the correct pronouns then he is _not_ deserving of facing my wrath as a human body shield. You are being a coward, Zack. Come out from there, you look ridiculous.'

Sephiroth lowered his sword a little and reached forward to push Cloud aside, at which point Cloud's brain finally kicked in.

_Kill Sephiroth, save Zack and Aerith and the world._

He had no weapons on him, but there was one near him: one he knew and wielded exceptionally well.

He snatched the Buster Sword from Zack and immediately fell to the floor.

'Ah!'

He tried to lift the sword. His arms flexed and strained and his heart beat hard because any moment now Jenova's adopted son was going to flick his wrist and _skewer_ him, but he couldn't pick it up.

It couldn't weigh this much. It had never weighed this much.

'Honestly Zack, this has been the worst plan you've ever had to avoid me.'

'Not true. There was that one time with the goat and the bowl of—'

'I remember, and stand corrected.'

Desperately, Cloud tried to at least get up and _face_ Sephiroth, but couldn't even manage that. His fingers were trapped between the handle and the floor.

'Let me help you with that,' Zack said, just now noticing Cloud's plight. He hefted up the sword with ease. Cloud groaned and massaged his fingers as he got back up—

—and stood face-to-face with Sephiroth once more.

'Who are you?' Sephiroth repeated, with the correct pronouns.

'He has an important message for you,' Zack said, grinning. Sephiroth failed to notice his humour.

'Yes? What is it?'

Cloud opened his mouth, and that was when the mako poisoning returned for its glorious encore: he vomited on Sephiroth's boots and fainted on the rest of him.


	3. Logic

[AN: I don't do this very often, because I find author's notes are distracting, but I'd like to just say thank you for all the support this fic's been getting. I've had over a hundred hits on AO3, and loads of positive feedback both there and here on FFnet. Especially thanks to _Think Outside the Tesseract_, who gave me the longest and kindest review I think I've ever received. And to _Sunset In Love_: well, being mean to Cloud is what FFVII fans do best… it's what the game taught us to do!

As an extra note, if you enjoy the way I write Zack and Reno especially, I highly recommend looking at _Thorne-Scratch_ on Livejournal, because my headcanons are heavily based on her writing.

Anyway, thanks for all of your comments, reviews, hits and kudos! I promise to keep updating every Sunday, and I hope that you all continue to enjoy my writing!]

* * *

**Chapter Three**

'_Logic, my dear Zoey, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.'_

It was dark, and Cloud hurt. The mako poisoning must have worn off, however, because although every muscle in his body ached, his head felt clearer than it had in hours. He didn't move, but began to run through a list of the last few things he had done in his mind.

He'd thrown up on Sephiroth.

No, no… he'd blown up some materia in an old Shinra machine, given himself a concussion, and dreamed that he'd thrown up on Sephiroth. This sudden clarity was obviously him waking up from a bizarre nightmare. Tifa and Cid must have found him and woken him up. Everything was going to be fine.

He opened his eyes, and found that he was in the Shinra infirmary again.

'Oh _no_…'

'Oh, you're awake. Good.' A thermometer was shoved in his mouth so hard it stabbed his tongue. 'Let me know when it beeps, _this time_.'

Cloud looked miserably at the nurse he'd run away from earlier. He tried to sit up, but couldn't: one of his wrists was handcuffed to the bed railings. Apparently, the Shinra nurses took fleeing patients personally.

He slumped against the pillows and started chewing on the thermometer. The trouble with this situation, he realised, was that it required _figuring out_, and he wasn't much of a figuring out kind of person. Point him at a monster and he could tear it apart; he wasn't even that bad at strategising, in battle. But present him with a trippy, completely impossible conundrum, and all he could do was stare blankly and hope everything went his way. What he really needed was Tifa: someone with a sensible head who could work their way out of things like this.

Of course, Tifa _was_ here, technically. She was a thirteen-year-old girl in Nibelheim, miles and miles away, with precious little understanding of who Shinra really were and even less understanding of what was going to happen to her over the next few years.

Cloud snorted, imagining how _that_ phone call would go.

'_Hey Tifa, it's Cloud. Now, bear with me on this, I need some advice: what do you do if you get sent back in time by a machine locked in up the old Shinra building, which by the way is a ruin in the future? Also a few other things happen and Sephiroth is evil, but that's not important… Tifa? Tifa are you still there?'_

He was already chained to the bed. He didn't want to be put in a straightjacket as well.

_Okay,_ he thought reasonably. _There are two options: this is real, or this is a weird-arse concussive nightmare and I'm going to wake up soon. If it's a dream, then nothing that happens matters. If it's real… _everything_ that happens matters._

It was simple, then. If there was even the slightest chance that any of this was real, then it was worth trying to change things. It was worth trying to stop Sephiroth and fix everything. If all of this was just a dream, or a hallucination, then… well, changing things wouldn't hurt anybody. He'd just wake up and laugh at how stupid he'd been.

He'd rather wake up laughing at himself than wake up guilty.

He nodded against the pillow. All right, then. That was that sorted.

Now for the bigger problem: _how_ to change things.

Aerith had told him things, in the Lifestream. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what they were. They hadn't seemed important, at the time. The only important thing had been that Aerith was talking to him, but now he realised that, if it _was_ Aerith, she wouldn't have been telling him anything he didn't need to know.

_You will be as you were._

That was the first one, and now it seemed so obvious. It had started seeming obvious, in fact, around about the time the weight of the Buster Sword had dragged him to the floor.

He was fourteen years old, and he was sitting in exactly the same body he'd had when he was fourteen years old the first time. For all that the nurse had claimed he was flooded with mako, he wasn't a SOLDIER. That mako had probably been some kind of residue from being thrown about in the Lifestream; none of it had actually been absorbed. He was a normal, weak teenage boy.

In eight years time, when he would be physically and technically at his very best, fighting Sephiroth would be the most difficult battle of his life. He would almost die a dozen times, he'd use a pile of phoenix downs, and he'd get nowhere near succeeding without the help of his friends

Fighting Sephiroth now, as a pathetic fourteen-year-old, would get him killed in an instant. He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid, and was even more surprised he was alive to ponder it.

And the other rules… _you may not tell anyone what may be_? Well, he'd already worked that one out, and it ruled out calling up little Tifa for help, as though that had ever been an option in the first place. But then, Cloud thought with a feeling of defeat, it also meant that he couldn't warn anybody about the future. He couldn't _tell_ Sephiroth that Hojo was a liar and Jenova was not his mother; he couldn't _tell_ Zack to leave Shinra now, before they filled him with bullets, and he couldn't just race down to a certain church in Sector 5 and just outright _tell_ Aerith not to start using the holy materia on her own, without her friends close enough to protect her from the inevitable attack…

He couldn't tell anyone anything, so how was he supposed to convince them to change the mistakes that got them killed?

The thermometer started beeping, but he didn't need to call the nurse. She swept down on him like a lavender-scented bird of prey and snatched the tiny instrument away. Grunting with disapproval, she stormed away from her least favourite patient.

Cloud sighed. There was no point worrying about that rule, and the limitations it placed on him. He'd never have been able to convince anyone that he was from the future anyway, so what did it matter whether he was _allowed_ to or not?

He couldn't remember the last rule for some time, but lay in the pristine white bed, staring at the ceiling as though it knew the answers to everything and enough glaring would force it to reveal them.

You will be as you were, no telling people what will happen, and…

'You may only change one life,' Cloud said aloud. The nurse had turned from one of her other patients to look at him, so he shook his head at her. 'Nothing, nothing.'

Only one life? How could he only change one life? Did that mean that he would have to choose, between Zack and Aerith? How was he supposed to do that; he couldn't just _choose_, it wasn't fair!

_Maybe_, he thought, _it means that I can't _kill_ more than one person. I killed Sephiroth in Nibelheim. Maybe if I don't kill him, something else will happen?_

He didn't know; he didn't understand. What was the point of sending him back in time, if he could only make a difference to one measly person? There were so many things that needed to be made better: Shinra had to be destroyed, Sephiroth had to be stopped, Zack and Aerith and everyone in Nibelheim and Midgar needed to be rescued… there was just so much that would go wrong; so much he had to make better.

Even just bringing down Shinra or killing Sephiroth alone would save more than one life. Combined they saved hundreds.

He pressed his hands to his face and sighed. What the hell was he going to do?

* * *

Cloud was released from the infirmary a few hours later, when the nurse was finally forced to admit that there was nothing physically wrong with him. He was advised to stay in the barracks and rest, because he'd been relieved of duty for the next few days.

'If you feel ill – _even the slightest bit _ – you are going to come straight back, do you understand?' the nurse had said, waving her stethoscope at him like a deadly weapon. Only after he'd agreed and read a several pages long list of the symptoms of mako poisoning did she finally allow him to leave.

He'd done as he was told, because he had no idea what else to do. The shame of having emptied his stomach all over Shinra's poster boy also had something to do with it, and the bone-deep terror of what Sephiroth would do if he saw him again.

Cloud had fairly well forgotten where the MP barracks was, and got lost trying to find it. He stood in one lift for fifteen minutes, stopping on every floor until he reached one he was certain he recognised.

The barracks for Shinra's infantrymen was deeply unimpressive. It was better than living under the plate, of course, but still fairly grim. No one particularly cared how clean or regimented they were, so their sleeping quarters were allowed to become a dishevelled mess. The floor could barely be seen under the piles of dirty laundry, and the walls _definitely_ could not be seen behind the pin-ups. A picture of President Shinra was up on one wall, pock marked with darts (several of which were around the groin area, which Cloud presumed was the makeshift bull's eye).

Most of the beds were unmade, but for some reason Cloud's was perfectly neat: pillow fluffed, corners folded and tucked under the mattress so tightly it took all of his strength to pull them back. There weren't any posters on the wall around his bed, and all of his belongings were still tucked under the bed in his suitcase.

Cloud wondered exactly _how_ long ago he'd come to Midgar. It seemed as though he'd only arrived earlier that day. He was probably trying to be neat, to make a good example of himself and hopefully stand out as organised and militant. He'd probably once thought that those were good traits for a SOLDIER.

He had to laugh at himself for that. As if Shinra cared whether their killing machines kept their beds tidy.

Flopping on the stiff mattress, he tried to follow the nurse's commands. Rest. Sleep. Don't be ill.

Cloud was a long way away from home. Eight years away.

He couldn't even close his eyes.

* * *

It took a week to get used to it.

There was so much to get used _to_, Cloud didn't think that anything would ever feel normal until he got back to the present day, but as it turned out, he'd been fourteen before and it wasn't all that difficult to get back into.

The nurses couldn't keep him off duty for long; not when physical signs of his sudden illness disappeared the next day. A timetable of marching around the tower, guarding whatever doors he was posed at, and practising his aim with the standard issue rifles in the shooting galley took up most of his time. He wasn't as fit now as he would be in the future, and he went to bed every night so exhausted he felt that even the other men's snoring couldn't keep him awake.

He was wrong, of course. For several nights, he barely slept at all, and got up feeling worse than he had when he'd gone to bed. It took four accumulated nights of insomnia for his exhausted brain to finally give up on worrying and let him pass out.

It only took a few days for him to remember perfectly the layout of every floor in the building (he'd already known a good deal of it anyway), but it took twice as long to get used to his reflection in the soap-spattered mirrors of the men's room.

His eyes and mouth were bigger; the rest of his face had yet to grow around them. His cheeks were plump and the line of his jaw was softer from puppy fat. Worse than his face was his body: his arms were thin as wires, his stomach flat but deficient of even a tiny bit of muscle. He was short and skinny, and with the spiky blond hair on top he resembled a stick of corn. It was no wonder he couldn't lift the Buster Sword. It was amazing that he could lift anything as heavy as a sheet of paper.

The knowledge that it was _possible_ for him to have muscles, and that he someday _would_ have them and _would_ be strong, made his current situation all the more frustrating. When he was fourteen, Cloud had perhaps hoped he'd be a strong SOLDIER, but hadn't ever really known what it would be like to be stronger than everyone else. The downgrade was nothing short of infuriating, and it was that fury that drove him to spend his small amount of spare time in the Shinra gym.

And it was at the gym that he met Zack once again.

Cloud was just coming off of the rowing machine when he walked in; not in his SOLDIER uniform for once, but a t-shirt and jogging trousers, with a towel thrown over his shoulder and a bottle of water in his hand to replace the absent Buster Sword.

Cloud didn't know whether to duck or call in greeting – Zack, after all, only presently knew him as _that sick guy who vomited on my boss_ – but was saved the decision when Zack waved to him.

'Hey buddy! Been wondering when I'd see you again.'

'Hi,' Cloud said. He'd taken to saying as little as he could lately, purposely cutting his sentences down to one word wherever possible, to avoid accidentally spilling something he shouldn't know yet. The fact that he was half the size of the other men had something to do with it, too: he remembered how to duck and dodge, but if he managed to really piss somebody off saying something dumb, he wouldn't be able to fight back. He had no interest in becoming Cloud, the Incredible Human Punching Bag.

Zack took the rowing machine next to Cloud and started to work. Cloud noticed with despair that Zack could do three strokes in the time it took him to do one. Surely he was never going to be that strong, no matter how much mako was pumped in him?

'Tch,' Zack said. 'I don't see my best friend for a whole week and all he has to say is "hi".'

Despite being rather dubious as to the 'best friend' claim, Cloud said,

'Sorry.'

Zack glanced at him over him shoulder.

'You're feeling all right, aren't you buddy?'

'Yes,' Cloud said, so quietly he almost couldn't be heard over the roaring rowing machine.

'No headaches, nausea…'

Cloud went red.

'No.'

Zack grinned, but didn't turn to look at him. Rather desperate to turn the conversation to a topic besides his embarrassing sickness, Cloud said,

'I haven't seen you in here before.'

'I come in every day.' Zack was just starting to huff now; the exercise finally taking its toll. 'Usually later than this, but Reno's got a mission in Wutai over the weekend so we're having our games night tonight.'

'You have a games night with Reno?' he said, trying to imagine Reno playing a board game. The closest he could imagine was Twister. Strip Twister.

'Yeah; we make our own games up. Mine are the best ones, like the Hojo's Lab Eating Challenge. Reno's are usually just streaking or setting things on fire.' Zack paused thoughtfully. 'Sometimes a combination of the two.'

Cloud stared.

'Hojo's Lab…'

'Eating Challenge, yeah. You have to eat something in Hojo's lab. Last one to be sick or transform into a horrifying monster wins.'

For his own mental wellbeing, Cloud chose to ignore the second part of that and concentrate on the important words.

'You can get into Hojo's lab?'

'Yeah.'

'While Hojo isn't there?'

'Yeah. Reno's a Turk, dude. He can do all sorts of sneaky shit.'

Cloud thought about that for a moment. Maybe there were two Renos.

'_Reno_ the Turk can hack into the doors to Hojo's lab?'

'What? No. We just grease him up and push him through the air ducts.'

'Oh.' Okay. There was only one Reno after all.

Zack powered through another few strokes on the rowing machine, and Cloud sat rolling back and forth on his seat, thinking. If he could get to Hojo's lab, he might be able to get into Hojo's files… and if he could do _that_, he might be able to find things. Things that could stop Sephiroth from ever going insane, without having to kill him; things that proved that Jenova was not, in fact, Sephiroth's biological mother, but a raving mad alien that only wanted him for his planet.

Vincent had told him everything he needed to know – or, Cloud corrected himself irritably, Vincent _would_ _someday_ tell him everything he needed to know. He just had to look for the name 'Lucrecia'; find some small piece of evidence to suggest that she was Sephiroth's real mother…

It was perfect.

He looked at Zack, still storming through his rowing.

'Can I come?' he asked. Zack gave him a quick look.

'Huh?'

Cloud cleared him throat and spoke up.

'Tonight? Can I come?'


	4. It's Not the Time that Matters

**Chapter Four**

'_Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It's not the time that matters, it's the person.'_

'Oi, what's this?' Reno snapped, upon seeing Cloud in the bar that evening.

'_Who_,' Zack said, '_who_'s this. And you _know_ Cloud; he's my best friend.'

Reno stared down at Cloud for a few moments without comprehension, and Cloud stared back from a position where it would be easy to jump behind Zack if the Turk decided to attack.

Cloud really, really missed being strong enough to fight.

'Oh yeah,' Reno said suddenly. 'The meat shield. Dude, we're not throwing materia at the animals in the zoo again, are we? Because I didn't bring _anyone_ to protect me.'

'No, we're still banned from the zoo,' Zack said. 'Cloud wants to be our drinking buddy.'

There was a pause, over which time Zack and Reno peered at Cloud with sudden suspicion.

'How old _are_ you, Cloud?' Zack said. Cloud hesitated.

'F-fourteen.'

Silence. Then, Zack sighed.

'Fine. No actual _drinking_ for you.' He turned to Reno. 'First round's on you.'

Reno got up from their table and wandered over to the bar. Cloud, meanwhile, stared around the rest of the fancy lounge. Places like this in the Shinra building were usually packed with employees on a Friday evening. It was bizarre to see the place so quiet. There also, mysteriously, had been no guards anywhere in or around the building when he'd left the barracks to meet Zack at the bar. Cloud wondered if news had gotten out that Reno would be getting drunk, and everyone had fled.

'So, what games are we doing tonight?' Cloud asked eventually. Zack shrugged, but he was grinning.

'You'll see,' he said. 'I don't want to spoil anything.'

'Can we do that game in Hojo's lab?' Cloud pressed, trying very hard to keep his tone casual. 'That sounded… um… fun.'

Zack only tapped the side of his nose. Cloud took a deep breath and really, really hoped that meant 'yes'. He'd rather not have to wait for another month to get the information about Lucrecia. The longer he left it, the harder it was going to be to change anything. He needed to get started as soon as he could.

Reno returned at last, balancing three pints of beer in his arms. He dumped them all on the table and pushed them to their respective owners.

'Dude!' Zack said. 'It's only been like, five minutes. Cloud is still _fourteen_.'

Reno blinked.

'Oh yeah,' he said, and took a swig of his beer.

'So he can't drink,' Zack said a little more slowly. Reno stared.

'Why? Hasn't he learned yet?'

Zack pressed a hand to his forehead, gulped down the entirety of his drink in one go, and then took Cloud's. As he began to drink that one more slowly, Reno leaned over and whispered conspiringly to Cloud,

'Don't worry, yo. We'll teach you. It's really easy: way easier than eating.'

Cloud sat back and wished fervently that Zack hadn't stolen his drink after all.

* * *

They were there for several hours, just talking and getting drunk. The first hour or so consisted of Reno repeatedly buying Cloud drinks and Zack repeatedly drinking them for him. When Zack got too drunk to care whether Cloud was underage or not, Cloud started slipping the booze to Reno to even things out – as much as he'd rather not have to be sober around a plastered Turk, he knew he needed to be clear-headed to sneak through Hojo's files. Reno didn't seem to notice that his beer was multiplying.

It was past midnight when Reno got up and announced,

'Have _I _got a surprise for _you_!'

He lurched out, and lurched back in again a few minutes later with a bright yellow chocobo. Cloud looked to the bar, but the barkeeper wasn't there anymore and the metal grill had been pulled down to protect the booze.

'What… what do you have a chocobo for?' he asked. 'Where were you _keeping_ it?'

Reno didn't answer him.

'I could only get the _one_, so we can't race,' he said, 'but we can do other stuff.'

'We haven't got Lazard yet,' Zack said, slurring just a little. It took a lot of alcohol to get a SOLDIER drunk, but he had worked hard and risen to the challenge. He snickered. 'The look on his face…'

The pair of them got up and left the bar, pulling the chocobo behind them. It plodded along happily as Reno tugged on its leash.

'What are we doing?' Cloud asked, but Zack only shushed him.

They snuck up the stairs and got out on Floor 51 – the SOLDIER floor. Cloud patted the chocobo's neck as they tip-toed down the corridor towards Lazard's office, to comfort himself as much as the bird, which seemed to be taking things very well so far. Just as Zack put his hand on the door marked _Director Lazard_, there was a creak from one of the rooms behind them.

Zack froze, and after a moment hissed,

'Oh, _shit_!'

Cloud and Reno looked at him, the first with terror and the second with distrust.

'What?' Reno said.

'It's _Friday_.'

'So…?'

'Sephiroth works late on a—'

'What are you doing?'

As one, the three of them turned around to face a mightily annoyed SOLDIER, First Class. Cloud tried to duck behind the chocobo, which started pecking at the floor.

Zack said,

'Um,' but stopped when Sephiroth pointed at him.

'No,' he said. He pointed at Cloud, and then Reno. 'No. _No_.'

Three blank faces gazed back at him. The chocobo ruffled its feathers and squatted down on the floor to rest. Sephiroth lifted his arms up in a gesture of surrender.

'There. I have told you not to do it. I don't know what you're doing, but I've told you not to do it. I wash my hands of whatever happens to you now.'

He turned and walked back into his office, slamming the door quite firmly behind him. Cloud thought he heard a lock click.

'Huh,' Zack said, and opened Lazard's office door.

Most of the cabinets were locked, but that didn't stop Zack and Reno. They picked one out that was 'big enough' within a few seconds, and a few minutes of Reno drunkenly fumbling with the lock and a length of wire had it open.

It took twice that long to get the chocobo inside, although that was probably because Cloud did nothing but stand next to the door with his mouth open, and Reno and Zack were giggling for most of the time about what Lazard's reaction would be in the morning. Finally, they managed to coax the bird into the cabinet, shut and lock the door behind it.

Zack flopped back against a desk. Reno stood proudly to admire the closed door, choosing to ignore the feeble cawing sounds coming from behind it.

'So… to Hojo's now?' Cloud said quietly, hopefully. The other two looked at him like he was mad.

'What? _No_. We've got shit to do before we knock ourselves out,' Reno said. Cloud slumped. Of course; the effects of eating things in Hojo's lab were bound to be enough to finish off a night out. As far as the other two were concerned, it would have to be the last thing they did.

'Now it's _my_ turn!' Zack said, and cheerfully led the way back out of the office. They went quietly past Sephiroth's office door, because the soft, high sounds of a blade being sharpened were resonating from inside.

Zack took them all the way back downstairs to Weapons Development. He had a duffle bag waiting for them there.

'What's ins—' Cloud began, but then Zack opened the bag and he wished he hadn't asked.

It actually took a moment to recognise the bizarre-looking items Zack had packed in there. They came in various colours and materials, some knobbly and some smooth, several sporting weird extensions from one end or the other. All of them were between five and ten inches long, and about three inches thick.

Cloud felt the blood rush to his face, and his dignity rush somewhere far, far away.

'Are those…?'

'Dildos!' Zack said, picking one out and flicking it on. It started doing a strange, wiggly dance. 'Cool, aren't they?'

None of them even slightly resembled any part of the human anatomy. It was difficult to imagine how most of them worked, let alone where they _went_. Cloud pressed a hand to his mouth. He wasn't sure whether he was about to scream or laugh hysterically but he thought it was best to stop himself either way.

'How many do you _have_?' he said eventually, turning his gaze to the seemingly endless depths of the duffle bag.

'Sixty-nine,' Zack said, far too proudly. Cloud caught the significance of the number and grimaced. 'What we're going to do is – Reno don't put it in your mouth, trust me – what we're going to do is hide them around all of Scarlet's weapons, and then, _then_ we'll tell her there's been a security breach so she has to check her room over. Then we can see how well she knows her own weapons.'

'Dude, we've done this one before,' Reno said, deeply unimpressed with the multi-pronged, buzzing gadget he was holding.

'Ah,' Zack held up a finger, 'but do you remember what happened _last time_?'

'Scarlet found 'em all.'

'And we said…'

Reno remembered, and sniggered.

'She'd probably kept them for herself, because we never saw them again.'

'Well, that would have been terrible,' Zack said, with profound misery. 'Because those dildos she found last time; they were _evidence_. Evidence of a malicious raid on Shinra property. It could have been _terrorists_ that left those dildos.'

Cloud had to agree that the dildos were pretty terrifying.

'So, this time we shall catch her in the act! This time I have cunningly covered the vibrators in chilli powder,' Zack's grin bordered on manic. 'If she takes a day off tomorrow, we know she used them.'

* * *

They took their time hiding the dildos around the room. Cloud was forced to admit that, with their outlandish designs, the high tech sex toys were surprisingly indistinguishable from Scarlet's (equally bizarre) weapons designs. If she had found them all last time, she either really knew her weapons, or really knew her vibrators.

For his peace of mind, he hoped it was the former.

When all sixty-nine of the dildos were meticulously hidden around the room, Zack picked up the phone on Scarlet's desk and called the speed-dial number for her suite upstairs.

'Hello?' he said, putting on a much deeper voice than he usually used. 'Yes. Yes, this is Shinra Security. I know. There's been a security breach in Weapon's Development. We can't see anything amiss ourselves—'

Reno squawked with laughter.

'—But we highly recommend you come and examine the evidence yourself. I know it's late, madam, but _justice_ doesn't sleep. Good night.'

He put the phone down.

'She's coming!' he said. 'Cheese it!'

They ran out of the door and got halfway up to the next floor before Zack realised that a) he'd left the duffle bag in Weapon's Development and it had his name on it and, b) Scarlet's suite was _upstairs_, so they'd only run into her if they kept going up. They fled back down again, retrieved the duffle bag, and hid for a while on the floor below. Zack pulled several beer bottles out of the duffle bag and they started to drink to the musical sounds of a sleepy Scarlet cursing upstairs.

They stopped drinking promptly when they realised that some of the chilli powder had rubbed off on the beer bottles.

'Okay,' Zack said, around slightly swollen lips, when Scarlet's colourful swearing upstairs had quieted down and their mouths had stopped burning. 'I think the new kid has earned the right to prove his mettle in a _real _man challenge of manliness.'

'To Hojo's lab?' Cloud asked tiredly, not really believing that they would say yes by now. There were plenty more Shinra employees to prank.

'To Hojo's lab, for the most stomach-burstingly awesome experience of your life,' Zack promised. Cloud nodded, relieved, and followed them up to Floor 67.

The doors were, unsurprisingly, locked tight. Reno happily started stripping. Zack produced a bottle of sunflower oil from his duffle bag, which Cloud was starting to suspect could hold all the secrets of the universe if only Zack wanted it to. When Reno was suitably greasy, he pulled the grate off of the air conditioning vents (fingers slipping on the bars) and squelched his way in.

_I'm going to save the world,_ Cloud thought, pointedly looking anywhere but Reno's oiled backside as it retreated through the shaft. _This is going to be worth it._

After a few moments there was a _thump_ behind the door. Reno could be heard cursing, voice getting progressively louder as he came up closer to the door and opened it from the inside.

'Damn man, next time you can go through the air duct,' he said.

'I'm too big. You need someone without muscles.'

They both turned to Cloud for a moment, who suddenly found the floor between his feet incredibly fascinating.

'Well, we're in now,' Zack said cheerfully, sweeping an arm around Cloud's shoulders and pulling him forwards. Reno made absolutely no effort to reclaim his clothes, but hopped up on a desk and sat back.

'Rules of Hojo's Lab Eating Contest for Manly Men are as follows:' Zack announced, 'you must consume something in this room. You may not consume something that you have _brought with you_; that's cheating and cheating is not for manly men. Extra points will be awarded for consuming more than one item _provided_ you are not the first to go out. The winner will be the last man to puke, pass out or transform into a monster.'

'Or spontaneously combust,' Reno added helpfully.

'Or spontaneously combust,' Zack agreed. 'Ready? _Go_!'

He and Reno ran to opposite ends of the room and started searching through all of the drawers and work stations for something that looked dangerous enough. Cloud watched them for a moment, and then sidled up to a computer and turned it on.

It booted up without asking for a password. Hojo must have thought the lock on the door was enough to keep snoopers out. Cloud glanced around and saw that his companions were still too involved in their search for something small enough to swallow and only _almost_ deadly to care what he was up to. He sat down and started tapping at the keyboard.

_Search: Lucrecia_

He waited for a moment while the screen loaded, tapping his foot under the desk. Somewhere behind him, Reno made a sound of triumph Zack whined,

'_I_ wanted one of those…'

It finished loading.

_Sorry, no results to display._

Cloud just sat there for a moment, reading the words again and again with a blank expression. They obviously didn't mean what he'd thought they meant the first time, because if they meant _that_, this adventure had been pointless, and if he'd gone through this whole debacle for nothing…

He slumped in his chair. Hojo hadn't kept any digital records of Lucrecia. Perhaps there had been paper copies, but he could be hiding those anywhere. They weren't in the libraries in the Shinra building; Cloud had _seen _those, in the future. If they weren't around then, he doubted they would be now, when Sephiroth was still alive and likely to find them.

That said, he knew he'd be traipsing up to the library at the next opportunity to check, just in case. It was on one of the higher levels, so he'd need to convince Zack to bring him up there sometime with his privileged keycard access.

Cloud glanced back at Zack and Reno. The former was studying some beakers of different coloured liquids, the latter tossing something squishy from hand-to-hand. He turned back to the computer and started typing again.

_Search: Jenova_

Reams of files came up, but a quick scan through their titles told him nothing that Sephiroth wouldn't already know. It was all the information that Hojo had gotten wrong: Jenova was an Ancient, Jenova was the perfect weapon, Jenova could be used to help the world and better science…

It would take days to go through all of this properly, and he didn't _have _days. He checked his watch. It was four-thirty-five in the morning, and he was beyond exhausted; he could feel his eyes aching and his muscles sagging. Pulling all-nighters was not easy on a fourteen-year-old body. In an hour and a half it would be considered 'morning' enough for early birds to be getting out of bed. If any of them lived in the Shinra building, and worked in the science department, they could be here in this room perhaps half an hour after that.

He had a little less than two hours to read everything Hojo had ever written about Jenova, pick out anything that might help to convince Sephiroth that he was not an Ancient, and then run and hide in the barracks so that he could be 'woken up' for work the next day.

He groaned and buried his hands in his hair. This had been a terrible idea.

It became even more terrible when Reno suddenly said,

'Yo, Cloud, you picked what you're eating yet?'

Cloud looked up, saw the things that Reno and Zack had picked out to eat (a squishy object that might have been kind of fungus and a beaker of blue liquid respectively), and panicked slightly. He glanced around, saw a half-eaten sandwich on the desk next to him and picked that up.

'Yep,' he said.

Nobody said anything, and after a second or two Cloud recognised the expressions of Zack and Reno's faces. It was the expression people got when they were told that someone they knew had died in a really horrible way.

'Dude, I wouldn't,' Reno said, pointing at the sandwich. Cloud stared at the moist thing in Reno's hand. It was wriggling.

'Why not?' he said. 'Not manly enough?'

'Cloud,' Zack said in long-suffering tone, 'when the eggheads realised we were pissing about in here, they started leaving normal food out to poison us. A sandwich left in here will melt your skin off and turn your insides out.'

Cloud dropped the sandwich and checked the palms of his hands. Nothing was melting.

Then something else dawned on him.

'The… the scientists _know_ we're in here?' he said.

'Sure,' Zack shrugged. 'They lock all their important stuff away so we can't get it; we don't piss them off that much.'

'They know we're in here, and they know what we're doing?' Cloud said, feeling dread tickle his back.

'Yeah,' Zack said. 'What's the proble—'

Cloud yelled in surprise as something hit his neck. He pulled the dart out, and then saw another hit Zack. He hit the ground hard and was out cold so fast he didn't get to see who'd attacked.


	5. One Solid Hope

**Chapter Five**

'_One solid hope is worth a cartload of certainties.'_

Cloud came to lying on his back on something cold and uncomfortable. Bright lights were glaring in his eyes, and he went to press a hand to his eyes to block them but couldn't. His arms were strapped down.

He opened his eyes and looked around – as best he could, considering that he was tied to a table.

Reno and Zack were either side of him, also bound to tables. Zack was awake, but Reno was still unconscious, and snoring softly. By the looks of it, they were still in the lab. That wasn't comforting in the least.

With a snort, Reno woke up.

'That took a while to wear off,' someone with a high, nasally voice mused from nearby. If Cloud hadn't been worrying already, he began to now. 'Next time I think I'll use a weaker dose.'

Footsteps tapped closer at an uneven pace. A wrinkled white face, framed with strands of greasy hair, came into Cloud's view and sneered at him. Apparently unimpressed with such a lowly creature, Professor Hojo turned away and limped over to Zack.

'I've known about you sneaking into my lab every month,' he said. 'I honestly didn't care that much. Nothing of great value was ever left in your reach, and the security footage has only ever shown a few idiots getting shitfaced and drinking chemicals.'

He hunched a little closer to Zack, who tried very hard to sink through the table.

'So what were you doing _today_, rifling through my computer? Hmm?'

'I didn't,' Zack said, a picture of innocence but for his record of breaking and entering.

Hojo sniggered.

'You know,' he said conversationally, 'Scarlet had a break-in today; the second time this year. She was very concerned about it. So concerned, in fact, she decided that it would be best to wake up everyone on the board of directors so that we could check our _own_ workplaces.'

He turned away from Zack and walked around Cloud towards Reno, who seemed surprisingly comfortable for someone in his position. Cloud wondered if Hojo had experimented on Reno before. It would certainly explain a lot.

'Well it's a good thing she did,' Hojo said with a triumphant laugh, 'or I wouldn't have caught _you_.'

The smirk slipped off of his face so fast it was like he'd ripped off a mask.

'What do you want with Lucrecia?' he snapped. 'What do you know?'

Reno tipped his head sideways to simulate a shrug. Although Zack appeared to have sobered up, Reno still seemed quite tipsy.

'Don't ask me, yo. I wasn't fuckin' with your computer; that was the kid.'

Cloud glared him with all the fury he could muster.

_I am going to kill you, Reno. I am going to get back to the present where I can actually pick up a sword, and then I am going to kill you._

Hojo turned around to face Cloud agonisingly slowly. His black eyes were narrowed to sharp lines behind his glasses: he didn't really believe that the boy in front of him was capable of so much as using a keyboard.

'You,' he said. 'What were you looking for?'

Cloud swallowed.

'Um—'

There was a hissing sound as the laboratory door opened. Hojo frowned even more deeply than before, which Cloud might have found this impressive, if not for the fact that he was still focused on the organs Hojo was most likely to remove and whether he could live without them.

'What do you want?' Hojo snapped at the intruder, whose brisk footsteps were now approaching the professor and his captives. Cloud twisted his head around enough to see a black coat.

'These are my subordinates,' Sephiroth said. 'You can't have them.'

Hojo sneered.

'That one's a Turk.'

'True,' Sephiroth admitted, 'and I will be contacting Veld shortly so that he can decide whether you may dissect _his_ subordinates, but the other two are mine and will be joining me in a meeting with Director Lazard in exactly ten minutes, if you'd be so kind.'

There was no mistaking the tone of his voice. Cloud was only glad that he was being rescued for as long as it took him to realise that he was just stepping out of Hojo's wrath and straight into Sephiroth's instead. Out of the frying pan and onto the seven-foot long katana.

Hojo hesitated for a while, but must have come to the conclusion that he could not keep hold of Zack and Cloud without divulging to Sephiroth what it was he wanted them for. Much as he might have liked it otherwise, Shinra didn't actually let Hojo chop up _anyone_ who wondered his way. They had to have done something pretty damn annoying first.

Cloud hoped dearly that he'd never get blamed for those dildos.

Giving in, Hojo dug a scalpel from his pocket and started cutting at the ropes around Cloud's body. It took a while to release him, because it was a very small scalpel and there was a lot of rope. Before he got up, Hojo leaned over and hissed,

'I will be _watching_ you.'

Suddenly the size of the scalpel in his hand didn't matter so much. It was big enough to get Cloud up on his feet and fleeing behind Sephiroth. He didn't look him in the face, just in case he remembered him – or realised that, not being in SOLDIER, he technically wasn't Sephiroth's subordinate after all – and decided to give him back to the scientist.

Hojo cut Zack free and stood grumbling as two of his specimens started for the door. Sephiroth nodded to Reno.

'I'm sure Veld will be along shortly,' he said. Reno snorted.

'Sure.'

Sephiroth ushered the two that he _could_ rescue out. The door whizzed closed behind them and he slumped slightly.

'One of these days, that Turk is going to cause a major catastrophe,' he said. Zack rolled his eyes.

'He's not as bad as his reputation. None of them are.'

'No, they are much _worse_,' Sephiroth snapped. 'And you are not going to say another word until I've decided whether or not to cut your head off.'

Zack rolled his eyes at Cloud behind Sephiroth's back, but did actually manage to remain quiet for the whole walk to the Turk's department (where Veld was, indeed, duly noted of Reno's predicament – it seemed that Hojo had not been lying about Scarlet waking the whole board of directors) and beyond that, to Floor 51, where he and Cloud followed Sephiroth meekly into his office.

Sephiroth went behind his desk, but didn't sit down.

'Zack, you are an idiot,' he said at last. Zack tried his very best to look apologetic, which still wasn't a very good impression. Sephiroth sighed.

'How many things did you break?'

'Nothing!' Zack said quickly. Sephiroth raised one silver eyebrow and looked to Cloud for verification.

'Nothing,' Cloud said, very quietly, to his toes.

'Well, that's a pleasant surprise. Where is your sword?' Sephiroth asked.

'In its locker, in the barracks.' Zack chuckled. 'I thought it was safer there; I'm never letting Cloud touch it again. He'll hurt himself.'

'How considerate,' Sephiroth said flatly. Cloud began to wish he had his standard-issue rifle on him so he could start shooting a hole in the floor to disappear through.

Sephiroth took a very long breath. He paused for a moment, and Cloud wondered if he was counting to ten in his head.

'So,' he said at last, 'you haven't broken anything, you haven't lost anything, and no one has been injured or died?'

Zack thought for a moment.

'Yes.'

Sephiroth lifted his arms up before him and tipped his head back as though he could feel beams of sunlight on his face.

'This is a miracle. It must be a message from God. I must leave Shinra and become a holy man,' he said.

Sephiroth's moment of enlightenment ended abruptly when there was a knock at the door. Lazard poked his head in.

'Sephiroth, could you sign some paperwork for me?' he said. 'Scarlet's just called in sick and I've got _mountains_ to get through.'

Zack let out a howl and doubled over in hysterics. Cloud started eyeing Masamune where it was resting on the wall above Sephiroth's desk and wondered if he could lift it up long enough to impale himself on it. Sephiroth's eye twitched but he managed a polite tone with Lazard.

'Put them on my desk.'

'I'll get them out of the cabinet.' Lazard nodded his thanks and retreated. A few moments later there was a loud squawk from down the corridor, a yelp and some crashing noises. Zack fell to one knee laughing.

'Go to the barracks and go to sleep,' Sephiroth said. '_Now_, or I swear to the merciful god that kept you from breaking anything tonight that I _will_ start cutting parts off of you.'

'He's cheered up,' Zack said to Cloud brightly in what he probably thought was a whisper. 'He doesn't specifically want my head anymore, just parts.'

'_Out_,' said Sephiroth, and Zack left with a grin. Some way down the corridor, Reno's voice could be distinctly heard delightedly crying,

'Dude, she totally took the day off sick!'

'I know!'

Sephiroth finally collapsed into his chair and put his head in his hands, letting his hair spill over his face. Cloud watched him for a moment, and then, deciding that he definitely couldn't see through all that, began to sidle towards the door.

'No,' Sephiroth said. 'You stay here.'

Cloud stopped and sagged. So close.

Sephiroth sat up and pushed his hair back. He looked a little more haggard now than he had the last time Cloud saw him, but nothing like as awful as he would in a few years' time, with Jenova screaming in his head.

'What's your name?' Sephiroth said.

'Strife, sir,' Cloud said. Sephiroth raised his eyebrows.

'Just Strife?'

'Uh… Cloud Strife, sir. Cloud Strife, Shinra MP Infantryman, new recruit from Nibelheim.'

'Nibelheim,' Sephiroth mused. 'I've never heard it. Can't be that important.'

Cloud was surprised to see a small smile on his face. Sephiroth gestured him closer and he stepped forward, more out of confusion than terror now.

'Unlike Mister Fair and the Turk, you do not appear to be intoxicated,' he said. 'In which case, I have to wonder what exactly you were doing running around with the pair of them all night. It's no fun to be the only sober one at the party.'

'I'm fourteen,' Cloud pointed out.

'I highly doubt that would stop Reno from buying you alcohol,' Sephiroth said. 'Or Zack, for that matter, once he is drunk enough. You appeared to be deeply uncomfortable even _before_ the Hojo debacle, when you had the chocobo, so I will ask you again: what were you doing with them?'

'Umm…' Cloud said. Sephiroth sighed.

'I could always transfer this conversation along to your _own_ boss. You're not in SOLDIER, after all; you're nothing to do with me. Who is in charge of the infantrymen anyway? Heidegger?'

'I was, uh,' Cloud thought wildly, 'I was trying to get my name on the list for mako showers.'

'Mako showers,' Sephiroth said flatly.

'I wanted to get in to SOLDIER,' Cloud shrugged. He wasn't completely lying.

Sephiroth stared at him so hard Cloud thought he might burn a hole through his skull.

'Mako showers,' he said again.

'Yes?'

'You put up with Zack and Reno, _drunk_, all night, so that you could get a mako shower?'

'Yes,' Cloud said. He wondered how much the future would change when he died now, for trying to lie to Sephiroth. Maybe someone else would kill Sephiroth later. Maybe Barret.

Sephiroth sat back for a moment, and then opened a drawer, pulled out a piece of paper and started scribbling. He folded it meticulously and held it out. Cloud took it, face blank.

'What…?'

'One order for a mako shower,' Sephiroth said. 'It will be a very _mild_ dose, considering your age and stature, but still a perfectly good mako shower. You might even be able to lift Zack's sword afterwards. You won't be able to swing it, but you won't drop it on your toes if you try to pick it up.'

Cloud stared at the paper.

'Why?'

'Because if you were desperate enough to spend the evening with those two for it, I dread to imagine what you'll do next,' Sephiroth said. 'Also Zack seems rather fond of you, which no doubt means he'll be dragging you into more of his nonsense. I'd only have to fill out _more_ paperwork if he squashed you.'

'Thank you, sir,' Cloud managed eventually. Sephiroth nodded and gestured towards the door.

'I suggest you go the same way as Zack.'

Cloud checked his watch.

'Actually, sir,' he said, 'I have to start work in ten minutes.'

Sephiroth looked surprised.

'No, I don't think you do,' he said. 'Not today. Go.'

Cloud fumbled a salute and hurried from the room. His head was throbbing and the floor felt like it was tipping slightly, and that was probably the effects of whatever Hojo had put in those darts, but he was smiling nonetheless.

He hadn't known Sephiroth the last time around; not really. He hadn't spoken to him once, right up until that day in Nibelheim. This time, though, Sephiroth already knew his name, and seemed to have an ounce or two of respect for him. Enough to pull strings and get him that mako shower – which, all right, didn't matter all that much to Cloud really – but the _thought_ meant something that Cloud hadn't been sure of before:

Sephiroth was not irredeemable.

He couldn't kill him, and he couldn't get any information to prove that Jenova wasn't his mother, but he could do _other_ things. He could throw hints, give advice, be a shoulder to… well, Sephiroth was probably incapable of crying, but a person to direct grievances at.

This was how he was going to change everything. He was going to make sure Sephiroth never went crazy, even if it took him two years to do it.

First of all, though, he was going to have his first mako shower. He gripped the paper in his hand a little tighter and grinned.

* * *

[AN: Emriel, You wanted more Sephiroth? Here, have some Sephiroth! Have _lots_ of Sephiroth!

Actually, a few people have messaged/reviewed me about things pertaining to Sephiroth. Considering how little we see of him before he got Jenovaed, I'm interested to see how many people see him as a pure villain vs just a very unfortunate, misguided character. Cast your votes, I guess?

Also, Hojo, to whom every bad thing that happens for basically the whole of FFVII can be blamed. Seriously. _Everything_.]


	6. The Shortest Distance

**Chapter Six**

'_A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.'_

Sephiroth had not been lying when he said he thought Zack was 'attached' to Cloud. If Cloud had been looking out for an opportunity to speak to Zack before, he found it impossible to avoid him now. Zack started turning up at the gym earlier every day so that they could talk while they worked – although Zack did most of the talking. Cloud was improving, but he got out of breath long before Zack.

Through Zack, he occasionally got the chance to speak to Sephiroth again. It didn't happen often, but he gradually found over the next few weeks that whenever messages had to be sent up to the SOLDIER Head Office, he was always the one asked to take them. Either Sephiroth had decided he liked Cloud and was requesting him, or the rest of the infantrymen didn't like going up there. Cloud could hardly blame them; it was easy to feel threatened when you knew that everyone on the same floor as you could pummel you _into_ said floor with only a small measure of effort.

However, despite his bettering situation, he hadn't had any inspiration since the day Sephiroth had signed him the form for a mako shower – which, mild dose or not, certainly _had_ increased his physical strength and speed to a level that would have taken months of work to achieve otherwise. There were no physical signs of this new strength on his body, though. He remained small and thin, and he'd had to take two days off after the shower to recover from the headaches and sickness it had given him.

He had wondered briefly, while curled up in bed trying not to vomit, how sickly with mako poisoning Sephiroth must have been as a child. There was enough mako in that man to power a town the size of Kalm.

There were also _other_ things in him, though: things that Cloud needed to find some way to overcome. He couldn't prove that Jenova was not Sephiroth's real mother, so he needed to find a way to prevent him from ever finding out about Jenova at all.

It was when he was posted up by the Shinra Building's front doors that he noticed the leaflet.

Guard duty was tedious, and he needed regular intervals of leg-stretching around the room to keep from beating his helmeted head against the wall in boredom. He wandered around the area, scaring the innocent civilians who were allowed on this floor and looking for someone he might be allowed to shoot. There were no such people; everyone was polite and respectful, lounging by the front desk or relaxing in the various seating areas with the magazines and leaflets left on the tables to entertain them.

He wouldn't have noticed it if the woman hadn't jumped so dramatically when she noticed him creeping up on her. He held a hand up in apology and she gave a terrified little wave, flapping the bright yellow leaflet she had been reading at him.

_Retire to Sunny Costa del Sol!_

Retirement… now Cloud hadn't considered that. It wasn't as though Sephiroth was old, but he sure as hell had earned an early retirement. Besides, who could stop him if he decided to leave? They wouldn't be able to drag the indestructible Sephiroth back to Shinra, and even if they could, how long would they last with him rampaging through their halls?

At the end of his shift, Cloud took the leaflet and tucked it away. The next time he was asked to run messages up to the SOLDIER Head Office, he slipped the leaflet onto Sephiroth's desk under a few piles of paperwork. There'd be nothing like tedious form-filling to make running away to Costa del Sol that much more inviting.

He saw Sephiroth three times in passing in the next week, and had one short conversation with him about the awful coffee they served in the Shinra cafeteria. Costa del Sol was never brought up, and Cloud began to suspect that Sephiroth had thrown the leaflet away without looking at it.

'Have you ever been to Costa del Sol?' Cloud asked Zack a few days later, when they were on the running machines.

'Yeah,' Zack said. 'Got sent there on leave once.'

'Looks like it'd be a nice place to go, if you wanted to leave Shinra,' Cloud said, trying very hard to hint and feeling like he was doing the verbal equivalent of slapping him in the face.

'Nah,' Zack said. 'I'd go back home to Gongaga.'

'Oh.' Cloud slowed his machine down a little. Talking was making him out of breath even faster than usual. 'I just thought it looked nice. Maybe Sephiroth would like it…'

Zack snorted.

'If Sephiroth ever leaves Shinra for anything, I will eat my sword.'

Cloud frowned. That was not very promising.

He kept the relentless hinting up regardless, sliding the words 'early retirement' and 'Costa del Sol' into conversation anywhere he could around Sephiroth, who seemed not to notice at all.

After six months, Cloud was giving up. He had to think of another plan, but he couldn't – he just _couldn't_ come up with _anything_, short of and blowing up all of the transport vehicles in Midgar the day before Sephiroth was sent off to Nibelheim.

He was starting to seriously consider that option when he called up to Sephiroth's office on his day off because there was 'news to discuss'.

'Resigning, resigning, resigning,' muttered Cloud, who had the previous week left a magazine open on Sephiroth's desk detailing how high-stress of a job working for Shinra was, particularly in the Turk and SOLDIER sections. Maybe Sephiroth had _finally_ gotten the idea into his mako-enhanced thick head that sticking around in Shinra wasn't good for his health.

'Hey, Cloud,' Zack said cheerfully as Cloud opened the door. Zack was grinning, which was usually his default expression, but Cloud found it a little odd given the circumstances. He thought that Zack would be a little more upset that Sephiroth intended to leave the company and start life as a peaceful sunbather on another continent.

'Hi,' Cloud said, to both Zack and Sephiroth (who inclined his head in greeting but said nothing). 'What's going on?'

He'd dropped the 'sirs' and general military dictation around Sephiroth after a couple of months working around him. Zack never used them and Sephiroth didn't seem irritated by it; he certainly never corrected him. Provided there was no one to witness pathetic mortals being unafraid of the mighty SOLDIER First Class, it seemed that they were allowed to act like friends in one another's company.

'Zack, this was your idea,' Sephiroth said. 'You can take full the full blame.'

Zack shot him a dirty look and Sephiroth corrected himself quickly.

'Sorry, credit. The full credit. I must have been thinking of something else.'

Zack rummaged in his pockets for a moment, and then pulled out three brightly coloured slips of paper. He held one out for Cloud to inspect. It read:

_ADMISSABLE: 1 adult for COSTA DEL SOL_

_1 DAY RETURN TRIP_

Cloud stared at it blankly. He turned it over, but it still only said 'one day'. One day wasn't a very long retirement.

'W-what?'

'We're going on holiday!' Zack said happily. 'I called up one of those radio stations to answer a question and I won three tickets. I always thought they were scams, but it turned out that the squishing sound they were playing that really sounded like that thing we found in Hojo's lab actually _was_ that thing we found in Hojo's lab, so I went back to the lab and read its name off the jar he keeps it in and I won. You've been hinting about Costa del Sol for _ages_ now, so I thought we could all go together.'

Cloud looked to Sephiroth for help, but none was forthcoming.

'I've booked us all the time off work,' Zack added, his speech gradually increasing in speed as he tried to say everything he wanted to before someone cut him off. It was a pointless endeavour; no one was going to interrupt. They were too confused and despairing, respectively. 'Turns out you two have barely used up any holiday time, like, _at all_. Sephiroth's still got holidays left from last year. When I asked the secretary about booking a day off for him she nearly cried, she was so happy.'

Zack paused, and seemed to realise that they weren't speaking.

'You're not speaking,' he said. 'Is this speechless with gratitude, or speechless with "Zack's done something wrong that he doesn't understand and he's going to pay"?'

There was a long silence, and finally Sephiroth – more likely out of unwillingness to explain what Zack 'didn't understand' than genuine appreciation – said,

'Gratitude.'

'Yeah!' Zack punched the air. 'I knew I'd get this right at some point.'

He slung his arm around Sephiroth's shoulder and chose not to notice the way his superior's eyes narrowed at the contact.

'C'mere, Cloud,' he said. 'Group hug!'

Considering the look on Sephiroth's face, Cloud didn't think that a group hug boded well for the physical health of anyone involved, but Zack grabbed him before he got to voice his opinions.

He was going to Costa del Sol.

Oh, hell.

* * *

The sunlight hit him like a brick wall of heat the moment he stepped off of the boat. Cloud squinted and lifted a hand to protect his eyes as Zack came bounding on shore next to him. He was already wearing his swimming trunks, and had been since he'd snuck into the militia barracks to wake Cloud up that morning.

Zack drew in a deep breath, bobbing on his heels with his hands on his hips.

'Got to love the seaside air!' he said.

Cloud smiled, but Sephiroth, who was now skulking up behind them in the shadows of the ferry, did not. He scowled up at the bright blue sky and hovered in the shade as though it would set him on fire to stand in direct sunlight.

'It's too hot,' he said simply.

Zack had no sympathy.

'It wouldn't be so bad if you'd take that damn coat off,' he said. Sephiroth fingered the silver cuffs at the ends of his sleeves.

'I like my coat.'

With a shrug, Zack set off towards the beach. Cloud gave Sephiroth what he hoped was an apologetic look before following.

Maybe, he thought, if Sephiroth liked Costa del Sol enough, he would decide to leave Shinra and stay here forever. That would at least make Cloud feel that his efforts for last several weeks hadn't been wasted. Glancing back over his shoulder at Sephiroth (who was descending upon the seaside town like a black cloud of doom), he doubted it.

Zack ran across the beach and straight into the sea without stopping, ditching his bags in the sand as he charged. Cloud saw him splash in right up to his waist and disappear under the water. Cloud flopped down by Zack's abandoned bags and watched Sephiroth stalk across the sand – or, rather, watched the reactions of everyone else on the beach as Sephiroth stalked across the sand.

As if he were not recognisable enough by his coat and long hair, Sephiroth had also opted to bring Masamune on holiday with him. Why he expected to be attacked on the beach Cloud could not fathom; perhaps he had twice as much paranoia as the average person to fill the hole left behind by his other emotions.

People were fleeing the beach in his wake. When the famous Hero of Wutai comes marching forwards dressed for a warzone, Cloud felt it was a fairly natural response to dash for shelter. Sephiroth, however, looked rather confused.

'Is the beach closing?' he asked.

'Yeah,' said Zack, who had come out of the water and snuck up behind them. 'It'll open again when the terrifying bastard with the katana goes away.'

Sephiroth rolled his eyes.

'One should always be prepared for an attack,' he said.

'Sure,' Zack waved his hand dismissively. 'Just put it down and come swimming.'

'I can't,' Sephiroth said, clearly baffled, and before Zack could even _ask_ why, added, 'the salt water would ruin my coa—'

'You take. The coat. _Off_,' Zack said with profound exasperation, but Sephiroth was not convinced. Zack settled instead for badgering Cloud, who was easier to win over. The air was too hot and stuffy to sit out in; it would be cooler to swim.

'Is he going to be all right?' Cloud asked once he was at a comfortable temperature in the ocean with Zack, who was chasing tiny yellow fish around with a bucket in the hopes of bringing them home as pets. Zack looked at Sephiroth on the shore. The SOLDIER's face was pink, and even from a distance it was clear that he was sweating.

'He's a stubborn bastard but he'll give in,' Zack shrugged. 'You can't win a fight with the weather.'

He was right, but Sephiroth 'gave in' very slowly. He eventually sat down, and then removed the spaulders and pauldrons that armoured his shoulders and unbuckled his coat so it sat open. After twenty minutes of sitting like that, he took his boots off.

By the time Cloud and Zack come in from the ocean to have a drink, he'd surrendered and removed his coat entirely. It sat crumpled beside him where he laid sprawled out, face-down on the sand. Cloud noticed that the hems of his leather trousers were crumpled where he'd unsuccessfully attempted to roll them up his shins.

'How're you doing?' Zack teased. 'Getting the ankles out, I see. How improper; you'll cause a scandal.'

Sephiroth responded with a muffled groan.

'This place is evil and so are you.'

'Costa del Sol's not evil. Put your trunks on and get in the ocean, you'll be fine.'

Sephiroth lifted his head enough for one green eye to glare out from behind all of his hair.

'Trunks?' he said, as though it were a filthy word.

Zack stared at the one eye and it stared back with fathomless loathing. Finally, Zack said,

'You didn't bring trunks to Costa del Sol. You brought your sword, but not a pair of _swimming trunks_.'

'Why would I own a pair of—'

'Ah!' Zack held a hand up to say 'Stop!', and started rummaging through his bags. 'Luckily for you, I have brought a spare pair. Aerith bought them for me but I… err…'

Cloud's start at the familiar name went unnoticed. Zack searched for a diplomatic phrase as he pulled the trunks out.

'Well, I like my old ones,' he said at last.

Sephiroth sat up, eyes fixed on the trunks Zack was offering him, and revealed a big red V of sunburn on his chest where his coat had not been covering him.

'I'm not wearing those,' he said.

* * *

The swimming trunks, decorated with little pink chocobos, were what finally drove Sephiroth into the ocean. He didn't swim, but stood up to his waist in the water to hide the shorts, arms folded and scowling at the beach (and anyone foolish enough to think that it was safe to come out sunbathing yet).

Cloud, meanwhile, had abandoned any notion that Sephiroth might ever want to retire to Costa del Sol, and was consoling himself by helping Zack build a sandcastle big enough to sit in. There was a pit next to the castle where Zack had insisted upon being buried up to his neck. From the ocean, Sephiroth had shouted at Cloud to please, _please_ leave him buried.

'Okay,' Zack stood back to admire their castle. It wasn't particularly admirable. There was a small trench on the outer wall where Zack had accidentally sat on it. 'I'm going to go get some beers from the bar. You can go and tell Grumpy, maybe cheer him up.'

'Grumpy' was not paying attention. He was looking out at the horizon, where the sun was setting in a fantastic golden display that painted the ocean – and its occupant – scarlet.

'All right.'

As Zack trotted off, Cloud sloshed his way into the ocean after Sephiroth.

'There are no sunsets in Midgar,' Sephiroth commented as he heard Cloud come close enough.

'Impressive, isn't it?' Cloud said. Sephiroth glanced down at him. The first thing Cloud noticed was that he was smiling, which would have made him happy were it not for the fact that the second thing he noticed was the fact that Sephiroth's face – and the rest of his body – was burned lobster-red.

'Oh Planet,' Cloud took a step back in surprise, and immediately felt a sharp pain in the sole of his foot. 'OH _PLANET_!'

He almost fell underwater trying to dislodge whatever had stabbed into his foot. He had to hop back to shore with Sephiroth's help, where he could sit down to look at his injury. There were several black dots on the bottom of his foot.

'You must have stepped on a sea urchin,' Sephiroth mused. 'The spines are embedded in your skin.'

He grabbed hold of Cloud's ankle and peered at the dots more closely.

'I can probably pick those out with a pin…'

Zack arrived to the scene of a scarlet-skinned Sephiroth grasping Cloud's foot in one hand and trying to dig the sea urchin spines out using the tip of Masamune with the other, all the while trying not to wince whenever his sunburned arms rubbed against his sunburned ribs.

Zack shrugged, opened a beer and started gulping.

* * *

'Feels a pity to be leaving so early, doesn't it?' Zack said on the boat back home. 'Next time I'd like to stay a week.'

The other two glared at him. There hadn't been any potions or cure materia for sale in Costa del Sol. Cloud was still trying to balance on one foot and hobbled with every other step. Sephiroth had, at least, found some relief for his malady; he was spraying after-sun cream in a repetitive loop all over his body.

'You are never taking me on a free holiday ever again,' Sephiroth said. He then rounded on Cloud. 'And _you_ are forbidden from choosing a destination ever again.'

Cloud held his hands up in surrender. Zack gave a little shrug.

'Well, _I_ had a wonderful time,' he said.


	7. An Angel

**Chapter Seven**

'_One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.'_

'You two are meeting my girlfriend,' Zack announced in the training room one day. Cloud, who was ducked behind a boulder in the virtual forest, looked up with sudden interest; Sephiroth made no remark, being knee-deep in the digital enemies the computers had summoned up for him to practise on.

'You're bringing Aerith up to Shinra?' Cloud said, thinking of how much the Turks would love for Hojo's precious Ancient to be brought straight to their door.

'Nah,' Zack waved one hand dismissively at Cloud and took a chunk out of an elfadunk with his sword in the other. 'She doesn't like coming up here. We're meeting her under the plate.'

'Zack, I do not have time to be introduced to the bizarre women you date,' Sephiroth grunted at last, skewering a holographic zolokalter halfway across the training room with Masamume. He got almost identical looks of fury from his spiky-headed colleagues.

'Aerith is not _bizarre_,' Zack said. 'Just because I dated that one psychic woman does not mean all of my girlfriends are _bizarre_.'

'That woman was not psychic,' Sephiroth said. 'She told me that I was a squid in another life.'

'No, she told you your _mother_ was a squid in another life. And how would you know what you were in another life? You're not psychic.'

Sephiroth groaned and Cloud tried very hard not to make any connections between psychic squids and Jenova. He concentrated, instead, upon the rage of Sephiroth insulting Aerith before he even knew her. So far, he'd managed to keep his temper in check with everyone when they mentioned things they knew nothing about, but it was nearly September now, and in his head he had a clock ticking down the hours he had left to make the changes he needed to.

One month. He had spent almost two years in the past and had one month left, and all that he had changed was having more than one conversation with Sephiroth before he burned Nibelheim to the ground, giving him severe sunburn and the occasional migraine when Zack dragged him out drinking – whether Sephiroth came with them or not.

'How did you even convince that woman to speak to you? She was the most anti-Shinra citizen I have ever met. The Turks investigated her for terrorism, and you met her in your SOLDIER uniform.'

'Hey, she had some valid points. That one reactor nearly blew up once.'

'That "one reactor" had not been properly maintained for several years. There is nothing wrong with our reactors.'

Before the argument could descend into hair-pulling – and before either of the SOLDIERs could get angry enough to be distracted from the holographic monsters so they came after Cloud – he said,

'So, when are we meeting her?'

'The psychic? Never, she left town—'

'_Aerith_. When are we meeting Aerith?'

'Oh.' Monsters dealt with, the programme shut itself off. Zack flipped the Buster Sword in his hand and clipped it onto his back. 'Tomorrow afternoon.'

* * *

'People are staring. I hate going out with you,' Zack said to Sephiroth, who had again refused to remove his signature black leather coat or leave his sword behind.

'People stare at you, too,' Sephiroth said, 'since you burned that bar down in Sector Three.'

'Sector Four. I burned a school down in Sector Three.'

It was true that everyone was staring at them. Unlike the people in Costa del Sol, the people of Midgar did not flee from Sephiroth, but they parted like a wave in his presence. Unlike Zack, Cloud was quite happy to trail along behind Sephiroth. He was still fairly small and weak in his teenage body – work outs and mako showers or not.

'Where _is_ this church you're taking us to?' Sephiroth said. 'Did you commit arson there, too?'

'Nah, I never set anything on fire in Sector Five,' Zack said. 'Although there was that one time I was streaking…'

Zack regaled them with the tales of all of his felonies across Midgar for the entirety of the train ride below the plate and to Sector Five. The closer they got to the church, and Aerith, the quieter he became on the topic. He suddenly seemed much more interested in the very innocent movie he'd gone to see the previous day.

He didn't knock on the door, but burst in grinning.

'Hey Aerith!'

She was stooped over her flowers, but stood as he bounded along the aisle and grabbed her in a bear hug. She squeaked as he spun her around in his arms and dropped her back in the flower patch.

'Hi Zack,' she said, giggling. She stood on tiptoe to look over his shoulder at Sephiroth and Cloud, who were edging into the church together. 'You brought friends.'

She stepped out from behind the sizeable shield that was Zack's body and smiled at the newcomers. Sephiroth nodded politely in her direction, showing no indication that he still thought she might be as mad as any of Zack's previous girlfriends. When she turned the smile on Cloud he felt his knees buckle a little.

He didn't know why he hadn't thought of it before. He'd always known that Aerith was still alive here; Zack talked about her quite a lot. He had not been prepared, however, to actually see her alive again. He had barely known Zack and Sephiroth the last time; Aerith was his friend, and she had died because of him.

And there she was, beaming at him with pink cheeks and flowers pinned to her dress.

'Hi,' he managed, around a dry mouth.

She skipped up the aisle and bounced to a stop in front of the two of them. She clasped her hands behind her back and stared up at Sephiroth like she was looking at an art piece.

'You're General Sephiroth?'

'SOLDIER, First Class. Not General.' He glanced down at Cloud. 'Why does everyone always think that?'

'So you're the same level as Zack?' she said. The corners of Sephiroth's mouth twitched.

'Well… a little better that Zack,' he said. Aerith laughed and, across the church, Zack squawked in protest.

'And _you're_ Cloud,' she said, turning on him with the same level of scrutiny.

'Y-yes,' he said, unsettled at how closely she was looking at him. She seemed to find him at least as fascinating as the famous war hero standing next to him. 'Uh, Shinra MP Infantryman.'

'Not a general either?' Aerith said with mock disappointment. Cloud shrugged bashfully.

'Not even a SOLDIER.'

Aerith pouted, and patted him on the shoulder.

'Don't worry,' she said, and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, 'I'm not a SOLDIER either.'

As she leaned back, Zack came up behind her and slung his arms over her shoulders. She cried out in surprise, and then laughed at herself when she realised who had grabbed her. The couple smiled at each other and Cloud felt a thud of pain in his chest.

_You may only change one life._

The rule came to Cloud's mind unbidden. It was the one that he had paid the least attention to thus far, mainly because he didn't understand how it would work. Everything that he did affected somebody else somehow, and everything he did differently meant that he'd changed their life to some small extent. He'd befriended Sephiroth and Zack, and now he had met Aerith before their time, basically changing all of their lives – and yet he hadn't been returned to the present and hadn't been punished. He couldn't even find a way to get in contact with the Lifestream again to ask. He'd considered that he needed to do something more drastic to have really _changed_ a life, but then how much alteration was enough to be considered a 'change'?

The puzzle did nothing more than give him headaches, so he gave up on it. Now, though, he had an idea.

'Are those real flowers?' Sephiroth asked. 'I didn't think they grew in Midgar.'

'Oh! Yes,' Aerith said. She fearlessly grabbed Sephiroth's hand and pulled him towards the flower patch. He followed only out of astonishment, it seemed, that anyone in the world would be brave enough to hold his hand. Cloud had never seen such an expression on Sephiroth's face as Aerith started a lengthy lecture about her precious plants.

Cloud kept watching her, and kept thinking.

What if 'change' a life meant _save_ a life? What if he was having so much trouble changing Sephiroth's life because to do so would also mean saving the lives of Zack, Aerith and so many other people?

But he could change Aerith's life. She never killed anyone; her living wouldn't change hundreds of people. It would only change her.

Cloud had been concentrating so hard on Sephiroth and Zack, whose deaths were so close, he hadn't thought that he might have been sent back to save someone whose death wouldn't be for several years yet.

'Zack's making me a cart so I can start selling my flowers around Midgar,' Aerith was saying. 'It'll be nice to see more flowers in the city.'

'But wouldn't you like to go somewhere the flowers grow properly?' Cloud said suddenly. The keeling Aerith and Sephiroth looked up in synchronisation, and Zack leaned back in the pew he'd taken a seat on to give him his attention.

'The flowers grow here,' Aerith said, pointing at the bright white blossoms around her ankles.

'No but—' Cloud fumbled as Zack laughed at him, '—where the flowers grow everywhere, not just in one church.'

Aerith shook her head. Her hair bounced around her forehead.

'Most people in Midgar don't even know what real flowers look like,' Aerith said. 'People in the countryside have all the flowers they'll ever need. I'd rather have them here, where they're appreciated.'

'It must be hard to grow them here,' Cloud said. Aerith's smile didn't falter.

'I like a challenge.'

'Flowers would grow anywhere Aerith asked them to, just because she asked,' Zack said.

'That was cheesy,' Aerith said, but she was smiling at the flattery.

She went back to talking about her plants with Sephiroth, who seemed oddly interested in horticulture. He had even set Masamune aside to help her pull weeds out of the dirt. Cloud considered getting him a bonsai tree. Maybe it would help him to relax; he seemed quite at peace pruning the flowers, despite all the complaints he'd had coming down here.

The idea of Sephiroth telling Jenova to shut up and let him look after his bonsai tree in Nibelheim almost made Cloud laugh.

He took a seat in the broken pews with Zack.

'Have you ever _been _out of Midgar?' he asked Aerith, knowing full well what her answer would be. She'd told him years ago.

'No,' she said.

'You should; you'd like it.'

'Dude,' Zack said suddenly, 'do _not_ listen to any of Cloud's travel ideas. Last time we took his advice, Seph came home looking like a lobster.'

Sephiroth stiffened at the memory, but said nothing.

'I don't think I _would_ like to travel,' Aerith said. 'Everything seems scarier out there… it feels like something bad would happen if I left Midgar.'

Cloud was temporarily unable to breathe, because the ghost of a hand had grabbed his windpipe and wouldn't let go. He swallowed, but it didn't loosen.

'Bad things happen to people inside of Midgar, too,' Sephiroth pointed out.

Aerith shrugged.

'I know,' she said. 'Oh, don't pluck that one, I like the petals.'

'What's up with you and leaving Midgar today?' Zack asked, giving Cloud a friendly shove. 'Aren't we good enough for you?'

With a great force of will, Cloud managed to clear his airways enough to speak.

'Yeah, I'm going to leave Shinra and run away to the country.'

His sarcastic tone felt weak to him, but Zack and Aerith laughed nonetheless.

'Dude, I'll come with you,' Zack said. Sephiroth snorted.

'You could never leave Shinra, Zack. What would you do?' He took his attention momentarily away from his gardening, sat back on his haunches and stared at his fellow. 'The ability to swing a sword the size of an ironing board is not generally sought after outside of SOLDIER.'

'What'd we do if we left Shinra?' Zack looked astounded. 'Anything! _Everything_! Hell, between the four of us, we could literally open up a _business_ doing everything.'

'Sounds like a plan,' Aerith said. 'So we leave Midgar, open a business doing everything… and then live happily ever after?'

'Yep.' Zack sat back and folded his arms behind his head.

'We've got a mission in Mideel next week,' Sephiroth said. Zack glanced up.

'Ooh, hot springs!' he said. He dashed a fist at the air. 'Curses, it seems our business plans will have to wait another week.'

'We're up north of Icicle Inn two weeks after that,' Sephiroth noted.

'Snowboarding…' Zack said, with longing.

'So, no leaving for another month at least, then,' Aerith said. 'What a shame. Midgar's just going to have to keep putting up with us.'

Dramatic, orchestral music suddenly echoed around the white stone walls. Sephiroth jumped, rummaged in his pockets for a moment and drew out his ringing PHS. Zack stared in disbelief as he flipped it open.

'_That's_ your ringtone?' he said. 'Seriously?'

Sephiroth gave him a look that very clearly expressed murderous intent, and then quickly turned his attention back to his phone.

'It's Sephiroth. Yes.' He sighed. 'I see. Under the plate, I won't be in the office for… give me twenty minutes. Yes.'

He didn't say goodbye; just flicked the phone closed and pocketed it.

'Those "business plans" will have to be postponed for more than a month,' he said. 'That was Director Lazard; he's just booked us another holiday for the beginning of October.'

Zack hopped up and stretched.

'Where to?'

'Nibelheim.'

If Cloud had thought that seeing Aerith again had hurt, he could not describe how the name of his hometown felt. He'd been shot in the stomach, he must have been: a sniper had hit him and there was a hole in his stomach the size of a fist. But when he looked down, there was no blood. His fingers were numb.

'In October?'

'He's put us in for the 25th September, but we'll probably be there a week or so. So yes, in October.'

'Oh, that's okay then,' said Zack, who was completely, happily oblivious to exactly how not-okay this was going to be. Cloud was going to be sick. He tried to point himself away from Aerith's flowers. 'I'm free that week.'

'You're free every week,' said Sephiroth.

'Not on the 20th, I'm not,' Zack said brightly. 'Neither are you, actually.'

Sephiroth glared with the force of a thousand angry suns.

'Please tell me that the words "radio competition" and "won a holiday" are not waltzing in the direction of this conversation,' he said. Zack tried to look apologetic, and Sephiroth sighed. 'Tell me it's not Costa del Sol.'

'The Gold Saucer,' Zack said. Sephiroth looked surprised.

'Oh,' he said, and then repeated Zack's earlier sentiment: 'that's all right then.'

* * *

[AN: For anyone not familiar with my writing (probably most people since I haven't written much on here besides _The Answer_), it's become a sort of joke among my friends that I always have an enormous time skip somewhere in my stories. This would be that skip. XD]


	8. There's No Point

[**AN:** Sorry about the late upload, everyone. I spent the weekend moving back home from Uni for the Christmas holidays, and I'm still pretty exhausted. Honestly, between packing/unpacking/realising I'd left something behind/driving back/realising I'd left something else behind/crying a bit/deciding to go without it, I completely forgot that it was updating day yesterday. Without further ado, here is Chapter Eight!]**  
**

* * *

**Chapter Eight**

'_There's no point being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes.'_

They took a helicopter ride to North Corel, and rode the cable car up to the Gold Saucer. Zack chatted animatedly for the entirety of the journey, not because anyone was engaging him in interesting conversation, but because the other two were so quiet he felt the need to fill up the silence.

Cloud could think of nothing but Nibelheim. One moment, his mind was rushing with a thousand last-minute plans to prevent his friends from ever coming within a hundred miles of his old hometown – ranging from the mundane to the agonisingly dramatic, in which he or they died in the process. The next moment, he'd believe that there was nothing he _could_ do. Nothing that he could imagine would ever work. A few minutes of aching despair later, he'd have another plot that actually might work, he thought, and then he'd be back to planning again. Whichever way, he was quiet: busily running through his ideas, or sitting alone in misery that he couldn't explain to the others without losing his chance to save them.

Sephiroth was equally silent, but didn't appear anything like as concerned as Cloud. He seemed perfectly at peace, eyes half-closed and occasionally smiling at his own thoughts. It took several hours, but at last Zack ran out of stories that started with 'This one time, with Reno…' and decided to draw attention to it:

'So, have you two switched personalities or…?'

Cloud jumped in his seat, startled out of his fretting. Sephiroth twitched his head as though shaking away a daydream, and turned his eyes away from the cable car window and towards his dark-headed companion.

'What makes you think that?' he said. Zack stared in genuine disbelief.

'Dude. Cloud looks like his favourite pet just died, and you keep smiling. You haven't even said anything sarcastic; you're just _smiling_.'

'I'm not allowed to smile?' Sephiroth frowned. Zack pointed at his face,

'See, that's more like it.'

Sephiroth raised the eyebrow that he had spent his many years in Zack's company deliberately training to look as cynical as possible.

'Would you rather I was miserable all the time?' he said. Zack held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

'No, no, but… well, you usually are anyway. You told me you'd kill me if I ever took you on holiday again, and yet you seem strangely okay with this.'

'Oh,' Sephiroth nodded, 'yes, I did, didn't I?'

Zack's eyes narrowed and he leaned forwards in the manner of a man interrogating a suspected murderer – which, technically, he was, even if the murders hadn't actually been committed yet.

'So you're not going to kill me for taking you to the Gold Saucer?'

'No,' said Sephiroth, with the deep and all-encompassing serenity that hermits in Wutai spent their lives trying to achieve. 'I was due a trip this year anyway.'

'Oh,' Zack said, and sat back. 'Huh.'

He glanced out the window, up at the ceiling and down at his boots. Then the meaning of Sephiroth's sentence seemed to come to him.

'I'm sorry, what?'

'I come every year,' said Sephiroth, who had now distracted even Cloud enough to warrant staring. He shrugged. 'It's unhealthy to be constantly working and maintaining a reputation; a decent amount of time should be spent stimulating the brain in ways besides signing reports and killing monsters.'

'So,' Zack said slowly, as though working out the most complicated mathematical conundrum known to man, 'what you do is: spend every day and night all year working yourself into a breakdown and repressing all of your emotions, and then for one day you come to a _family theme park_ and… let your hair down?'

'Last year I came for a fortnight,' Sephiroth said wistfully.

'You said you were on a top-secret mission in Corel for two weeks last year,' Zack said. Sephiroth cleared his throat and turned to Cloud.

'So why are you acting so miserable, if Zack's assumptions are correct?' he said, over the sound of Zack's furious muttering. Cloud opened his mouth, closed it again, and started searching for a reasonable answer on the walls and floor of the cable car.

'I'm just… tired,' he said, lamely. Sephiroth turned back to Zack, immediately satisfied with this answer.

'See,' he said. 'Cloud's acting nothing like me. I'm never tired.'

Zack looked at both of them with doubt, but apparently couldn't think of anything else to say (which actually came to the others as a bit of a relief), until the cable car came within view of the glittering tower that was the Gold Saucer, and gradually shuddered to a halt at the end of its line, through a fat pink moogle's mouth.

'Three tickets,' Zack said, waving his radio prize at a man who was sweating profusely in a chocobo costume. He flapped a feathery arm at the gates to allow them entrance. Zack jogged across the big yellow disc and started scanning the map. He sighed,

'We'll have to go to the arcade and get some—' (Sephiroth tugged a nearly-bursting wallet out of his trouser pocket with some difficulty, and threw it for Zack to catch) '—G… P…'

Zack opened the wallet, and then jumped the catch the coins that spilled out all over his hands. Cloud bent to help him scoop them all up.

'Holy shit, man,' Zack muttered. 'Where'd you _get_ all this?'

A tiny shrug was the only answer he received. Sephiroth stepped over all of the spilled GP – and Cloud – to check the map over.

'To the Battle Square?' he suggested. Zack's confusion at all the GP disappeared immediately,

'Ooh okay!' he said.

'No,' said Cloud, who – despite his planning/despairing – was still paying enough attention to current affairs to register exactly how badly Zack and Sephiroth playing on the Battle Square would go for everyone. The Gold Saucer was a lucrative business, he was sure, but they probably didn't have the sort of insurance that Shinra did, to allow First Class SOLDIERs to tear up entire training rooms on a weekly basis.

The other two glanced him. Zack looked rather disappointed, but Sephiroth only turned back to the map and said,

'Speed Square, then?'

'Sure,' Cloud said, relieved. How much damage could they do on a roller coaster?

* * *

'Okay, just hold the towel up like that for a moment…'

Zack glared out from behind a waterfall of blood. It cascaded from the gash above his eyebrow (to which he was pressing the once-pristine white towel that the Gold Saucer's resident nurse had passed him), and down over his left eye, cheek and the corner of his mouth. Attempts to stem the bleeding, while running to find someone with medical training on the premises, meant that his hands and forearms were also coated in blood. He looked like he had stepped out of a horror film, or, more accurately, a fight with Sephiroth.

'I still maintain that I could clear that up easily,' Sephiroth tutted quietly, watching the nurse dig gauze and bandages out of the drawers that took up all the space in her tiny office. It was difficult to tell under all that blood, but Cloud was certain that Zack was scowling even harder.

'I am not getting the guy who _pistol-whipped_ me to clean up the hole in my skull,' he snapped.

'That is a gross exaggeration. I didn't get anywhere close to your skull,' Sephiroth said. 'I also didn't "pistol-whip" you. The rollercoaster turned a corner too fast and—'

'Fifteen years of SOLDIER training, the quickest reactions on the Planet, and the grace of a swordsman all went out the window in one blinding flash, leading you to lose control of a plastic gun a tenth of the weight of Masamune, and hit me on the head,' Zack said. 'I don't buy it.'

Sephiroth went rather red in the face and turned obstinately away from his furious – and furiously bleeding – comrade. The nurse gave Cloud a worried look and he tried his best to look apologetic. She got to work on cleaning up Zack's face. Cloud took a seat on the counter.

Zack was overreacting really, he thought. With all the mako in his bloodstream he was bound to heal up soon enough, and anyway Cloud was fairly certain that Sephiroth hadn't meant to hit him quite that hard, even if he _was_ being beaten at the laser shoot. He'd looked quite shocked at all of the blood, anyway, although he hadn't technically apologized yet.

'You'd be surprised how often these things happen,' the nurse said, with forced cheer.

'You get a lot of psychotic SOLDIERs?' Zack said bitterly. The nurse gave him a faintly terrified look, probably because she thought that one of these SOLDIERs was now going to hunt her down and kill her, whatever she said. Noting her terror, Zack put on a more friendly face.

'Must be pretty sweet working here, head wounds aside,' he said. 'D'you get free tickets?'

'Fifty percent off,' she replied, suddenly very chirpy again. Zack had that effect on people when he wanted to. It was a talent that Cloud would really have liked to possess. Maybe if he was as charismatic as Zack, he'd be finding it easy to stop Sephiroth from going to Nibelheim…

He pressed his hand to his forehead. He wondered what it was like for normal people to walk around _without_ headaches.

'Did I hit you, too?' Sephiroth muttered sarcastically, too quietly for the chattering Zack to hear. Cloud looked up at him with the expression a mother wears to look down at a naughty child.

'You should apologise,' he said flatly. Sephiroth looked flabbergasted.

'I didn't _do_ anythi—'

Apparently all the worrying about Nibelheim had worn Cloud down enough over the last few days that he somehow managed to appear genuinely intimidating, or at least tired and annoyed enough to be a pain in Sephiroth's arse if he didn't get his way, because he relented. They glanced at Zack, who was now considerably less bloody and apparently much more cheerful for having a young woman in a nurse's uniform blushing and giggling at him.

Sephiroth sighed.

'I've had that high score at the Speed Square for eight years running,' he said, in the tone of someone giving up their beloved pet for adoption. Cloud gave him a thin smile,

'What was that you said earlier, about not having to keep up reputations here?'

When Zack was happily bandaged up and had his pockets full of painkillers, they thanked the nurse, who stared after Zack with longing, and left her office.

'She was nice,' Sephiroth said awkwardly.

'Yeah,' said Zack, in a stiff tone that didn't suit him. 'But I've got Aerith back home.'

'Aerith's nicer,' Sephiroth said quickly. Cloud lifted a hand to cover his chuckle. He'd heard from Aerith that Sephiroth was still visiting her church to help with the flowers. He and Zack had agreed not to bring it up to him, because they were reasonably certain that he would kill or maim them in some horrible way if they did. Cloud wondered what kind of a difference it would make later, that Sephiroth and Aerith had actually met…

Then again, they might have met the last time around, for all he knew. She'd kept Zack to herself; maybe she'd kept her other friends quiet, too, even if said friends were now the psychopathic murderer she was helping her new pals to stalk across the world.

Cloud considered that. No, actually, she probably would have mentioned it.

He came back to reality in time to watch Sephiroth apologise to Zack's boots, which apparently accepted the request for forgiveness as their owner grabbed him in an enormous hug. Sephiroth managed to straighten out the expression of utter terror and confusion in time for Zack to let him go, but Cloud saw it and knew he would spend the rest of his life wishing he'd had a camera ready.

'Chocobo racing?' Zack suggested.

'Zack, you have a head wound and you are doped up to the eyeballs on drugs,' Sephiroth said. 'I'm not going to say that racing on a flightless bird is the stupidest thing you could ever do, because I was actually listening to those stories about Reno on the way here, but it's still probably a bad idea.'

'You can't race anymore,' Zack said with a wave. 'Some guy fell off the track and tried to sue them. You just bet on a bird, give it a pat on the head, and watch a professional race on it.'

'Oh.' Sephiroth thought for a moment. 'That sounds dull.'

Zack, already on his way towards the Chocobo Square, snorted back at him.

'That's just because you know I'm going to back the winner, and you're going to lose all those pretty GP coins to me. Sephiroth's fists clenched at his sides.

'I highly doubt that.'

* * *

Sephiroth spent so long going over the statistics of the chocobos and their riders the three of them missed their opportunity to bet on the first race. The second time, he poured over the information cards for each chocobo as fast as possible, and then bet a good half of his GP on a hot pink bird called Geraldine.

'It is the most likely, statistically, to win,' he sniffed at Zack, who couldn't stop laughing.

Zack and Cloud had to put their own measly GP together to bet on a yellow chocobo called Frances, because Sephiroth refused to lend either of them anything.

'If you want my GP, you'll have to win it,' he said.

Cloud had never been to the Gold Saucer until his debacles with AVALANCHE, at which point people were no longer allowed any access to the birds beyond betting on them. So the chance to 'meet the chocobo' was a strange experience for him, although that could easily have been attributed to Zack repeatedly pointing out how much Frances and Cloud resembled one another and to Sephiroth attempting to bully Geraldine.

'I have put half of my GP on you, so if you don't win I swear that you will be an ingredient in microwaveable _soup_ come tomorrow,' he growled into the area that chocobo's ear was probably hidden under the pink feathers. 'I'm a SOLDIER, First Class. I could do it.'

'Seph,' Zack said loudly, startling both him and Geraldine, 'if you were anyone else, I'd have to remind you that you are _threatening a chocobo_. As you're you, and you probably _are_ capable of blackmailing birds: stop it. That's cheating.'

All the cheating in the world didn't make a difference: Geraldine came last, and Zack and Cloud spent their winnings trying to distract Sephiroth for long enough to stop him going back and strangling the jockey. Cloud even gave up and let him wreck the Battle Square, which the employees were not happy about, until they realised that it was Shinra's favourite soldier that had done it.

'We're sure it can be fixed,' they said, flushing and bowing furiously. 'Just go on home and tell everyone how great the Gold Saucer is!'

'We will,' Zack assured them, while Sephiroth stalked off to try and beat his high score on the Speed Square again.

* * *

'It was _supposed_ to win,' he muttered despondently on the way home.

'We know, Seph,' Zack said, and made another tick on the tally he was keeping on the back of his hand.

'The statistics _said_ it would. It was the damn jockey's fault.'

'Maybe you should've threatened him, instead of the chocobo,' Cloud suggested. Zack's eyes widened and he shook his head at him. Sephiroth thought for a moment.

'Yes, I suppose that would have worked better,' he said.

'But you'd have to get to the jockey first,' Cloud said, backtracking quickly before Sephiroth decided to turn the cable car around. 'I mean, they're upstairs in the…'

Zack's head-shaking was getting frantic, and he was drawing a finger across his throat. Cloud cleared his throat and started again.

'Well, you don't see them until the race starts.'

'I suppose,' Sephiroth muttered. He pondered it for a moment, but only said, 'It was _supposed_ to win…'

Another tick added, Zack said,

'Look, if you want the GP back, you can have it. I don't even _go_ to the Gold Saucer that much anyway.'

'No, keep it,' Sephiroth said, and rattled his still-rather-full wallet. 'I still have all this.'

'Take it as compensation for us ruining your one day of having emotions and stuff,' Zack suggested. Sephiroth smiled,

'I'm not the one with a bleeding cranium.'

'So you admit it!' Zack cried, jumping to his feet and immediately banging his head on the low ceiling. He slumped back into his chair with a groan, holding his head with both hands.

'I admit to nothing,' Sephiroth said. 'But don't worry about my "day of having emotions", as you put it. I'm sure there will be another opportunity for me to let out all of my pent-up rage.'

And then, as if Cloud hadn't already shrunk back into his seat far enough with the pain of those words, he just had to go and add,

'You two will be the death of me, though. I swear it.'


	9. Not One Line!

**Chapter Nine**

'_You can't rewrite history. Not one line!'_

Cloud barely remembered the rest of the return trip to Midgar. Zack woke him up at some dead hour of the night because the helicopter was landing. They must have said goodbye to each other at some point, or perhaps the other two were as tired as he was and they'd all just slouched off back to their beds. Either way, he woke up the next day and couldn't even remember getting back into his bed in the barracks.

It was the 21st of September. Zack and Sephiroth would be leaving for Nibelheim in just four days, and walking straight into their untimely deaths.

Two years had felt like no time at all, and now four days stretched out in front of him like a road that never ended. But he had decided on a plan, and four days was plenty of time for what he had to do.

One shower and very strong coffee later, he was loitering on the Turks' floor looking out for red hair.

Reno came in with his suit in tatters and bruises all over his face, with a similarly dishevelled Turk that Cloud did not recognise. They stumbled past Cloud into Veld's office without so much as blinking at him. Cloud listened to Veld's slightly muffled yelling for a good twenty minutes before they were excused.

'He took that well, I think,' Reno muttered to his partner, who only glanced at him in disgust before marching away.

'Hey, Reno,' Cloud said, stepping quickly into his path as he came near. Reno's eyes narrowed as he tried to recognise the slight boy in front of him. Cloud didn't really blame him for forgetting who he was; every time he'd ever seen Reno before, the Turk had been either blind drunk or working his way towards that state. He almost wished he could forget Reno, sometimes.

'Who's asking? If Reno owes you money, he went that way.' He pointed in the direction of his now-fled associate.

'No, you don't owe me money,' Cloud said.

'Really?' Reno looked genuinely surprised.

'Well,' Cloud amended, 'actually you do, but that's not what I want right now. Look, are you up for a bit of breaking and entering?'

Reno's entire demeanour changed in an instant from tired and suspicious to bright enthusiasm.

'_Am_ I!' he said, tearing his jacket open to reveal the dozens of lock-picks, screwdrivers, knives and other various criminal tools on his person. 'What do you need?'

Cloud glanced up and down the corridor. It was empty, and Veld's office door was firmly closed.

'I need to get into Director Lazard's computer, so I can change where Sephi—_someone_—is being sent on a mission this week.'

Reno didn't miss the slip, and didn't bother to let Cloud think he had.

'Sephiroth piss you off or something?'

'Yeah,' Cloud muttered. 'Something like that.'

'Well, Lazard's computer isn't going to be good enough, not for a First Class,' Reno said. 'Their missions have to be approved by the President, so we'll have to break into Lazard's office _first_ and then sneak up to the President's.'

Cloud nodded, undeterred.

'That's what we'll do, than,' he said.

'Woah, woah, though,' Reno added, putting his hands up. 'I'm doing this for free. Veld already kicked my arse once today—'

'I heard.'

'—and I'm not giving him another opportunity without some _compensation_.'

Cloud had already thought of that.

'How about you don't have to repay the money you owe me?'

'… How much is it?'

'Five hundred Gil.'

'Oh.' Reno stuck his hand out and they shook. 'Deal.'

They walked together out of the corridor and down the stairs, making their plans for the big event. Reno claimed to be able to get keycards for every floor, and said he could get Lazard and Shinra's passwords without a problem. It occurred to Cloud that this was going very easily: all he'd have to do was turn up.

Then, of course, Sephiroth came around the corner.

Reno smirked,

'Later dude,' he said, and jogged away from Cloud, probably in the direction of the infirmary. Then again, knowing Reno, he could just as easily be headed for a bar.

'Was that… Zack's Turk friend?' Sephiroth asked, watching Reno's retreating back.

'Reno,' Cloud said. 'He owes me money.'

'He owes everyone money,' Sephiroth muttered, then helpfully added: 'I wouldn't speak with him too often, if you can help it.'

'You don't like Reno?' Cloud said, trying to sound innocently surprised. It didn't work; Sephiroth hadn't forgotten the rescue mission in Hojo's laboratory two years ago, or Reno's involvement in the escapade.

'I don't trust him,' he said. 'I don't trust anyone who clangs like pocketful of change when they walk.'

* * *

Reno approached Cloud two days later, when he was on guard duty at the doors.

'I've got everything,' he said. Cloud stared at him through the red haze of his helmet visor.

'I was starting to think you'd forgotten,' he said. Reno held his arms open in a 'sorry' gesture.

'This shit takes time, kid.'

They agreed to meet on the SOLDIER floor at ten in the evening, on the premise that Lazard would be out by that time. Cloud was there, waiting on the stairs at ten. Reno arrived with the keycard at half eleven.

'I hate you,' Cloud said, but not loud enough for Reno to actually hear and possibly decide that this adventure wasn't worth it.

Reno had assured Cloud that no one would be working this evening, but each of them held their breath and tip-toed past Sephiroth's office nonetheless. When Reno had gotten Lazard's door open and they'd snuck inside, Cloud was sure he heard the Turk release a sigh, and wasn't entirely certain that he hadn't done the same.

'Get me into the computer,' Cloud said, and Reno flopped in Lazard's chair and started tapping keys.

Cloud drummed his fingers on the desk in agitation until Reno finally said,

'Okay, got you into the timetable programme. Find whatever you want to change.'

He stamped his shoes on the edge of the desk and kicked the wheeled chair backwards, effectively gliding out of the way as Cloud practically jumped over the desk to get to work.

The programme was incredibly simple: laid out like a spreadsheet with colour-coordinated tabs for Third, Second and First Class SOLDIERs. Cloud scrolled down until he found the date he wanted: _25 OCT_. There in bright red was a tab with both Sephiroth and Zack's names on, and the little note: _Nibelheim_. Double-clicking the tab brought up a more detailed explanation of the mission the two of them were being sent on, and the additional note that a few volunteers from the Shinra Militia would be needed.

Cloud deleted Sephiroth's name from the entirety of the report. After some thought, he decided to leave Zack's name behind: somebody still needed to sort the Nibelheim reactor out, after all, and it would be suspicious if a mission once deemed worthy of _two_ of Shinra's finest was suddenly demoted to needing none of them at all.

He made a new tab for the same day, with Sephiroth's name in it, and sent him off to Bone Village for a week to 'investigate terrorist action', at Reno's suggestion. He chose not, however, to use the name that Reno suggested for the supposed leader of the secret terrorist organisation. He doubted that Sephiroth would buy that Tits Palmer was behind it all.

'Done,' he said, and clicked the bright yellow button in the corner marked 'Send for Approval'.

'Up to Shinra's then,' Reno said. 'And then I don't owe you any money.'

'No, you don't,' Cloud agreed. '_After_ it's done.'

Reno huffed but said nothing as they exited the room and crept back out along the corridor to the stairs. Cloud couldn't help checking over his shoulder every few paces, expecting Lazard to come storming after them for daring to mess with his SOLDIERs.

They got up to the president's office without interruption, and Reno wasted no time in hacking onto the computer terminal. Cloud was, once again, left to entertain himself around the room while the work was done for him. He hovered by the door, ready to take a dive at anyone who tried to break in – even if it meant knocking President Shinra himself to the ground. The president could stand to spend a few days concussed in hospital, and by the time he came around Zack would have dealt with Nibelheim by himself and there'd be no need for Sephiroth ever to go there. Remembering the sound of the plate over Sector Seven crashing down, Cloud actually started to hope that the president might walk in so he had an excuse to give him a kicking.

'Found it,' Reno muttered. He clicked a few buttons and then punched both hands in the air in victory. 'Aaaand, approved!'

Cloud slumped against the wall. There, it was done, now there'd be no need to—

The door opened and Cloud leaped at the intruder. He had _won_, God damn it! He had saved Sephiroth's life and there was no way that this bastard was going to change that, whoever they were.

The intruder caught his wrist as he came forward, twisted it sharply and threw him to the floor. He turned and got up to face them again, but:

'S-Sephiroth?'

Sephiroth gave him a look that he usually used on Zack. It generally meant _you are an idiot_ or _you've just broken something precious_. He turned the look on Reno, who took it without flinching – he was probably used to worse from Veld. Sephiroth stepped towards the computer.

'Move,' he said to Reno, who did so, and mouthed to Cloud:

'_No take-backs_.'

Cloud shook his head, but not so much in disagreement with Reno as in complete disbelief that he had managed to get _this far_ for the hundredth time, only to have everything ruined by the man he was trying to help.

He hated irony.

Sephiroth was reading the document on the computer without expression. After a while, he muttered,

'You've transferred me to Bone Village.' His eyes flicked up to Cloud, who actually concentrated on them for the first time since he had arrived in the past. They still didn't look the way they had – _would_ – in Nieblheim. But they looked angry.

'You're not drunk?' he said, and although he phrased it like a question, Cloud could tell that he already knew the answer. He shook his head, because if he answered out loud he was pretty certain that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from screaming all the things he wasn't supposed to say. Then any other chances of changing this would be ruined.

If he even had any chances left.

Sephiroth crossed his arms. He glanced at Reno.

'Out,' he said, and Reno scampered away without hesitation. Cloud took a few steps back as if to follow him, but Sephiroth snapped,

'Not _you_.'

Only when the sound of Reno's footsteps had stopped echoing from down the stairs did Sephiroth speak again.

'You had better make the explanation you are about to give _phenomenally_ good.'

Cloud pressed his lips together. Sephiroth eyes narrowed and his anger seem to shift down a few gears into marked irritation.

'Did Reno rope you into this?'

'No,' Cloud muttered.

'Because,' Sephiroth continued, sounding a little hopeful now, 'a Turk could get into considerable trouble for blackmailing a fellow Shinra employee, especially when that employee is underage…'

'Reno didn't blackmail me,' Cloud said stiffly. As Sephiroth's mood became more reasonable, his shifted up into despairing fury. He turned for the stairs out of the room, ignoring Sephiroth's protesting call. 'I'll see you tomorrow, before you leave.'

* * *

He woke up in the barracks with Zack sitting on his chest.

This wasn't particularly unusual, because Zack did like to drag Cloud off to strange places around Midgar at the weekends, and always got fed up with Cloud lying in.. Today was a weekday, though, and Cloud frankly wasn't in the mood to look into the eyes of the man that he had doomed to becoming a corpse in the desert.

Cloud shoved upwards in the hope of toppling him off of the bed, but Zack neatly dodged the attack by jumping up, and landing straight back on Cloud's stomach. Cloud grunted as his lungs were crushed. He gasped a few times to get his wind back, during which time Zack said,

'Sorry kid, but you've got to get up.'

Cloud wriggled an arm out of the blankets and checked his watch.

'It's five in the morning,' he said. 'My shift doesn't start until eight. Piss off.'

'You aren't doing your shift today,' Zack said cheerfully. 'You're going to Director Lazard's office to be debriefed, and then you're spending the day preparing for your mission away.'

'Mission… away?'

'To Nibelheim!' Zack grinned in what he probably thought was a cheerful and nonthreatening manner. He looked to Cloud like a shark swimming up to snap its jaws around a seagull. 'Sephiroth told me that you were pissed about us going away, and I remembered that – hey, wasn't Nibelheim your hometown? So we hacked into your records and it totally is, so we volunteered you for the mission. You're coming with us!'

He frowned.

'Cloud? You look kind of sick.'

* * *

**[AN: Second week late in a row; really sorry everyone! Also, the line 'You had better make the explanation you are about to give **_**phenomenally**_** good,' is an intentional reference to the British historical sitcom **_**Blackadder**_**, which has been a huge influence on my sense of humour over the years. Specifically, it's from **_**Blackadder II**_**, Episode 5: 'Beer'. Also also, I've only just realised this week that FF has been removing my paragraph breaks (which I mark with *s) from all my documents. I've added in the line breaks this site uses for this chapter, and I'll get around to correcting all the previous chapters whenever I can. Sorry about that!  
**

**Have a great Christmas tomorrow!]**


	10. Courage

**[AN:** I got a brand-new laptop for Christmas and it's taken a while to set everything up, so I didn't really get to check my reviews on this site until today. I came back, saw the number 77 and made a little squeaky hiccough noise. To JayneParker in particular: don't worry about me not having 500 reviews yet. I'm still boggling at the amount I do get! To everyone else: thank you so much, you are all amazing, and I'm sorry I didn't get to reply to all of you individually like I usually do (it seems a bit late now for most of you).

Now on to the fic!**]**

* * *

**Chapter 10**

'_Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.'_

'Planet, would you lighten up?'

Cloud looked up at Zack. The truck was swaying around them as it rumbled along the road to the small town of Nibelheim. The other MP volunteer was snoring next to Cloud. Zack had stopped doing squats in the middle of the truck to berate Cloud, and now stood with his hands on his hips. Sephiroth, seated at the back of the truck, sat up slightly.

'It's one thing to be nervous going home, but you've been miserable as sin for days,' he said. 'You're driving me crazy.'

'Sorry,' Cloud muttered.

'Zack is right,' Sephiroth said, a little more kindly. 'You've seemed… _unsettled_ for several days now. Is there something concerning you?'

Cloud considered all the excuses he could give, and then decided he didn't particularly care for excuses anymore. If there was anything left that he could do to 'change one life', he couldn't see it. Nobody had been able to snap Sephiroth out of his lunacy last time; he didn't see how he could do it this time. Not without any evidence to back up his insistence that no, Jenova was not his mother; his mother was human and locked in a crystal and probably didn't want him to take over the world.

Despite this, he found himself speaking carefully.

Well, there might be another chance, after all.

'If something had gone wrong,' he said quietly, 'and you could go back and… and _change_ it…'

'What have you broken?' Sephiroth said immediately.

'Nothing!' Cloud said, holding his hands up defensively. 'I haven't. It's just: what if you knew something bad happened and you could go back and stop it? How would you _do_ it?'

Sephiroth still looked suspicious, so he turned imploringly to Zack.

'I dunno,' Zack said with a shrug. 'I think you've just got to get on with it. Everyone gets shit wrong; you can't change it. Actually, if nothing ever went wrong then everything would be kind of boring.'

'But—'

'I'd have to agree with Zack,' Sephiroth put in. 'I only appreciate your company all the more for having had a… well, a less than satisfactory life prior to meeting you.'

Cloud looked between the two of them. They didn't understand, and he didn't know how to explain his predicament to them without outright telling them what he was here to do.

'But,' he said, 'if someone died—'

'You've killed someone?' Sephiroth said. He didn't seem worried. Actually, he sounded rather proud.

'No!' Cloud said.

_Yes_, he thought.

'Who was it?' Sephiroth said, disregarding Cloud's objection.

'No one!'

_You._

Zack chuckled.

'Yeah, as though Cloud could kill anyone. He can barely do a sit-up.'

'Yes I can!' Cloud cried, pride suddenly butting in where sense should have been. He added quickly: 'Do a sit-up. I can do a sit-up. I haven't killed anyone.'

_Yet._

'Relax, we believe you.' Zack rubbed his knuckles against Cloud's temple. 'Now chill out, will you? We've got maybe an hour and a half before we get there and have to start working.'

'What, chill out like you?' Cloud said. 'Doing squats because you're so impatient to get to all those monsters?'

'He made a joke!' Zack cried, pressing a hand against his chest. 'It was a sarcastic one, but nonetheless, Planet be praised! He is cured!'

* * *

They arrived in Nibelheim some time later. Zack stretched and sprinted off to look around the town. Sephiroth followed after him with a grim expression, like a mother forced to hurry after her hyperactive toddler. Cloud and the other militia volunteer – he hadn't asked his name – stood guard at the village gates.

Nothing, for the entirety of Cloud's return to the past, had ever felt as painfully like déjà-vu as being back in Nibelheim did. Things had, for the most part, happened differently in Midgar this time around. Cloud had befriended Zack and Sephiroth, and had spent his time with them, or thinking about how to prevent them from getting to this place. Now he was standing exactly where he'd stood before, and for some reason the same thoughts suddenly crossed his mind as they had the last time.

_I didn't make it into SOLDIER._

It was his second attempt, and he _still_ hadn't managed to get into SOLDIER. It was rather selfish, but he couldn't help wondering if that was what he was meant to do: if the one life that he was meant to change was actually his own.

How different would the world be if Cloud Strife had made it into SOLDIER?

Zack came bouncing back from around the water silo in the middle of the town. He waved at the two of them in their uniforms. Sephiroth trailed after him.

'Hey guys, you can come off-duty,' Zack said.

'We have a guide to take us up to the reactor tomorrow,' Sephiroth explained. 'We won't need any assistance until then. Try to rest.'

He and Zack turned towards the hotel. The other militia boy pulled his helmet off and sighed. Cloud didn't recognise him; they had never been posted on duty together before.

'Oh,' Sephiroth added, hesitating at the hotel door, 'and you have permission to speak to speak to your families, if you want to.'

He gave Cloud a nod that might have also come with a smile, if they had not been in public. Cloud's stomach twisted.

His mother. He hadn't seen his mother in… well, since she had died. Now she was alive and he could actually see her. The front door wouldn't even be unlocked, and he made straight towards it.

'Hey! Hey, wait!'

A girl ran up and grabbed his arm. He started, but not because he didn't recognise her. Really, he'd expected her to look _more_ different, and was just surprised that she was so easily identifiable.

Tifa Lockhart, at fifteen years old, already had the height and figure she'd have into her twenties. Her face was a little more rounded and her muscles a lot softer than they'd be when she grew up, but otherwise the girl peering up at Cloud from under her huge western hat was the same as the one who'd fight Sephiroth at his side.

'Do _you_ know Cloud Strife?' she said. 'He's in SOLDIER, like Mister Sephiroth, but I don't know if he's First Class yet. I asked the other two but they just laughed and said I had to ask you.'

'Err,' Cloud hesitated, and then had an idea like lightening hitting him in the head. 'Yeah, I know Cloud. You're Tifa?'

She beamed.

'Yes!'

'Cloud says "hi". He would've come, but they only wanted two SOLDIERs on the mission.'

'Oh! When you go back, give him this from me!' Tifa leaned up and kissed the side of his mask. 'And tell him that I still remember his promise!'

'He remembers too, don't worry,' Cloud said, struggling to keep from laughing at her over-exuberance, or feeling guilty for lying to her. He wasn't really sure if he was right, but he thought that if he told Tifa who he was now, it would change too much. There would be no way he'd think, later on, that he'd really been in SOLDIER, and something might go wrong.

It wasn't worth taking the risk. It wasn't worth breaking the rules now; because he'd just thought of something and he needed this one to damn well work.

'Look, Tifa,' he said, 'this is going to sound really, really strange but I need you to do me a favour.'

He explained what he wanted her to do. She made a few protests, but he reassured her that everything would be fine and stopped her worrying without too much trouble. She left only after he'd gotten her to agree.

He was so distracted with his planning as he walked into his house that he forgot why he was going there in the first place.

'Hello?'

The blonde woman, from whom he had inherited his wild hair and small stature, peeked at the doorway from the kitchen where she was working.

'Who are…?'

Cloud pulled his helmet off and stared at his mother with his mouth hanging open. She squeaked with delight and rushed down the hallway to grab him in a hug.

In his mind, Cloud saw this house on fire: all the wood peeling and turning white under the force of the heat, the carpets blackening, the ceiling crumbling under its own weight and crashing down to the floor below… his mother's red body, blood and pus bursting up from under the swollen skin.

He hadn't stopped it. He hadn't tried hard enough.

She was going to die, and he hadn't even thought about her – hadn't even taken her life into account under the tangle of wrongs that he was struggling to straighten out.

When it happened, it would not be Sephiroth's fault, because who could really blame a man for breaking under the stresses that he was about to be put through? Cloud wasn't exactly model of mental health himself.

No: when Nibelheim burned to a few charred lumps of wood and a pile of bloody bodies, it would all be because of Cloud.

'Are you all right, sweetheart? You're shaking,' he heard his mother say. She loosened her hold on him so that she could lean back and see his face, but he gripped her tighter and cried like she was dying in his arms, because he knew that when she did die, he wouldn't get the privilege of holding her.

* * *

Cloud put his helmet on before he left the house the next morning, and hurried up to the old Shinra Mansion, even though he knew that there was no point. If he had convinced Tifa to do what he wanted – and he was fairly sure he had – there would be no trip to Nibelheim.

'She's late,' Sephiroth muttered of their guide when they'd been waiting for twenty minutes. Cloud smiled under his mask. When he got back into the future, he'd buy Tifa a new set of knuckle dusters.

'Relax, she's coming,' Zack said. He pointed into the village. 'Look.'

Cloud's smile ran away across the Planet as Tifa jogged up to meet them.

'Sorry I'm late!' she said brightly. 'Let's go!'

They were halted by one of the villagers, who asked for a photograph. It made Cloud a little dizzy to stand _behind_ the cameraman and watch him take the photograph that was going to confuse him so much in the future.

When they set off, Cloud made a point of moving up to the front of the group, within Tifa's line of sight. She walked a little faster and he sped up to keep up with her.

'What are you _doing_?' he growled at her, quietly enough that the others behind them wouldn't be able to make it out. She gave him the tiniest shrug.

'If I'd said I was sick like you told me, they would have just found another guide. Don't worry, I have another plan.'

Cloud nodded, somewhat relieved at the knowledge that she hadn't outright decided to ignore his request, but equally anxious that he now didn't know what was going to happen. He sidled back towards Zack and Sephiroth.

'You two seem to be getting on well,' Zack said, giving Cloud a nudge with his elbow. 'Did she like you before or is it just the uniform?'

'She doesn't know it's me,' Cloud replied, using the same tone he had used on Tifa not a moment before.

'Why n—'

'I promised everyone I'd get into SOLDIER,' Cloud snapped, surprisingly irritated that he really _hadn't_ achieved that goal. 'I just… don't want them to know. Okay?'

'Achieving the rank of SOLDIER within two years of joining the company is an extremely unrealistic goal,' Sephiroth said. 'Especially taking your age into equation; we don't accept recruits under the age of sixteen, so you could only have been admitted within the last month. That aside, it takes the average person at least four or five years of service to be considered for SOLDIER; possibly longer since the Wutai war ended and call for recruits has become less of a necessity.'

He flicked his eyes down to Cloud.

'You have nothing to be ashamed of.'

'Thanks,' Cloud said to the horizon, because it was difficult holding Sephiroth's gaze at the best of times. 'But don't tell anyone who I am, all the same.'

'As you wish.'

'Whatever you say, bud.'

They came to the rope bridge, and Cloud remembered with a shudder how this was going to go. He glanced at the other MP, who had been silent all the way up here. The poor guy didn't know any of them; he was probably just doing this job for the extra cash he was never going to receive.

'Shouldn't we go one at a time?' Cloud suggested, as everyone moved to cross at once.

'He's right,' Tifa said. 'The bridge isn't that stable. Mister Sephiroth, you first!'

Sephiroth started across the bridge. He didn't seem concerned; he'd always been light on his feet. He looked around at the mountains as he crossed, the bridge barely quivering under his footsteps. And yet, Cloud noticed, it was definitely wobbling slightly.

He looked across at Tifa, to see if she had noticed the same thing – and then he saw what her plan was.

The ropes on this side of the bridge had been loosened, and she was gently nudging the knots with her foot so that they came undone, and the bridge became more and more unstable, rocking and swaying with Sephiroth halfway across it.

He had stopped moving now, very aware of the bridge's alarming movements.

'No, wait!' Cloud cried, lunging at Tifa to make her stop.

That was when the first rope uncoiled from the post and the whole bridge heaved downwards. For a moment he thought that Sephiroth had fallen, but no: he was still there, holding on to the rope with both arms, one foot perched on a wooden plank to keep him upright.

Cloud pushed Tifa out of the way, snarling,

'_That's_ your idea!?'

He called out across the chasm to Sephiroth,

'One of the ropes has come loose!'

'I would never have guessed!' he replied, voice only a little strained from the exertion holding on for dear life. 'Can you tie it back? The ground's a long way down. I expect I'd survive, but it would still hurt.'

Cloud tried, but in the end it had to be Zack, with his SOLDIER strength, who pulled the rope bridge back into place and tied it steady. Sephiroth got across and they followed him one at a time. Cloud and Tifa crossed last, and she said to him before he left her,

'I'm sorry. You made out like nothing mattered more than keeping Sephiroth away from the reactor; and like he said, he would have survived the fall. I thought it was a good idea.'

'He would have survived the fall,' Cloud sighed. 'And then he would have found his way to the reactor without us.'

'Sorry,' Tifa said again and, thinking of the way her father's body would look in a few days' time and who would be to blame for it, Cloud patted her shoulder in forgiveness and hurried on.

* * *

Because they had taken the correct path this time, the troupe made it to the Nibelheim Reactor much faster than they had in Cloud's memory, even with a couple of random monster attacks thrown in.

'We'll go in,' Zack said, climbing up the steps to the door with Sephiroth, 'you guys stay out here.'

'Why can't I come in?' Tifa pouted. Zack looked momentarily awkward, but Sephiroth said frankly,

'Shinra secrets. There are things inside this reactor that the company doesn't want civilians to see.'

'_I'll_ come in,' Cloud said. He nodded to the other MP. 'You can take care of Tifa while we work.'

'Oh, no,' Zack said, putting his hand on Cloud's chest as he tried to join them. 'SOLDIERs only, trooper. You can keep the lady company.'

'But—'

'We'll only be a minute,' Zack promised, and gave Cloud a little push backwards. The reactor door closed firmly behind him and Sephiroth.

'Oh, no,' Cloud said. 'No you don't.'

He hit the button to open the door, but it made a low buzzing noise and the word _LOCKED_ appeared on a little panel beside the open button. Cloud hit it again, harder, with the same result.

'No,' he said, and hit the button a third time, then a fourth.

'Chill out,' the other MP said, taking a seat at the foot of the steps. 'They won't be long.'

'No!' Cloud said, punching the button so hard his fist hurt, and then turning his attention to the door itself, hauling kicks at it with all of his strength. He hurled his whole body at the door, trying to slam it open with his shoulder like he'd seen Zack do when he was thrown out of bars under the Plate.

'NO!' _BANG!_ 'FUCKING!' _BANG!_ 'OPEN!' _BANG!_ 'PIECE!' _BANG!_ 'OF _CRAP_!' _BANG!_ _BANG!_ _**BANG!**_

Tifa was backing away, but he didn't care. Sephiroth was stuck in there with no one but Zack, who didn't have a clue what was going to happen; what the monsters in those tanks were going to do to him; what the name of his 'mother' was going to mean to him; what the voice of Jenova was going to start screaming in his head.

'ZACK!' he shrieked. 'ZACK YOU BASTARD, LET ME IN!'

He pounded on the door a few more times, but it was so solid he doubted that they could even hear him inside.

'SEPHIROTH! ZACK! FUCKING! LET! ME! _IN_!'

No one answered, no matter how long he screamed and did battle with the door, and by the time Zack and Sephiroth came back out of their own accord, Cloud had given in and sat, huddled, at the top of the stairs. He jumped up when the door opened.

'Sephiroth—' he said, but the First Class SOLDIER marched right past without giving him a look. Tifa and the MP volunteer scrambled to follow him as he stormed away with a face as immobile as the rock the reactor had been built into.

'It's not true,' Cloud said, and noticed absently that his voice was straining. Zack came up beside him and patted his shoulder. He looked up at the older man imploringly. 'Whatever he thinks – everything he thinks – it's not true.'

Zack squeezed his shoulder and didn't say anything.


	11. This One Can

**[AN:** Remember how this story used to be fun and happy?

I'm sorry.**]  
**

* * *

**Chapter Eleven**

'_There isn't a little boy born who wouldn't tear the world apart to save his mummy. And this little boy can.'_

The secret compartment on the wall slid open and Zack stepped out, looking weary. It was a look that Cloud had never seen on him before, and the fact that he was wearing it in the Shinra Mansion, one day before the Nibelheim Incident, was enough to make Cloud sick.

'Don't go down there,' Zack said.

'Is he…?' Cloud hesitated, because he'd been about to say 'all right'.

'Hell if I know,' Zack said, leaning back against the hidden entrance. 'He wants to be left alone so he can read, but there's like a bajillion books down there. It'll take him weeks to read all of them.'

_Three days,_ Cloud mentally corrected. _Or, at least, three days to read _enough_ of them._

Out loud, he said,

'I want to talk to him.' He took a step forwards but Zack put a hand up to halt him.

'Seph doesn't want to talk to anyone. He's in a _bad mood_.' He indicated at his forehead, where a red bruise three inches across was beginning to appear. It would be purple by the afternoon. Cloud wondered exactly what Sephiroth had thrown at him. Probably one of the books.

'That's why I need to talk to him,' he said. 'Zack, those books are… I need to stop him.'

Zack shrugged and stepped away from the wall.

'Your funeral.'

Cloud charged down the stone tunnel so fast he almost tripped on one of the gaps between the boards and fell the rest of the way down. On the bottom floor, he hesitated by the wooden door that he knew Vincent was lying behind. He wondered if he should let him out now, or perhaps slip him a note. If he could get him up, maybe Vincent could explain Jenova to Sephiroth...

_You may change only one life._

With a huff, Cloud abandoned his friend to a few more years of solitude and hurried to the more immediate problem of Sephiroth's descent into madness.

'Zack, I told you to leave!'

Cloud ducked and something smashed against the door behind his head. He saw glass on the floor: Sephiroth had thrown a beaker. The glass was dry, though, so at least he hadn't resorted to chucking acid at anyone yet.

'I'm not Zack!' he called, preparing to dive out of the way if Sephiroth decided that he didn't care.

No projectiles came his way for several seconds, and then Sephiroth said,

'Cloud?'

His voice suddenly sounded small, and that was even worse than the shouting – even though Cloud had never really heard Sephiroth shout before, either – because it made him sound vulnerable, which made him seem human, which made Cloud feel like he wasn't an enemy in the making.

'It's me,' he said softly, creeping further into the room and finally _seeing_ Sephiroth in the hallway around the corner. He was holding a book in one hand, fingers clasping so tightly there were lines in his leather gloves.

'I'm busy, Cloud,' Sephiroth said, tone still quiet but with a hint of irritation seeping through. 'Ask Zack if you need something.'

'I wanted to talk to you.'

Sephiroth put the book back on its shelf with forced care. His hand closed into a fist at his side. He looked at Cloud. Any other time, Cloud knew no one could hold a gaze like Sephiroth, but today he glanced away. His eyes, in fact, were never fixed anywhere for long.

'What do you want?'

'Seph, those books…' (Cloud hesitated because Sephiroth had actually winced at his use of Zack's nickname), 'well, they're not true. None of them. Hojo was wrong, Jen—'

'You've read them?' Sephiroth cut in sharply, and for a moment he actually did manage to keep his eyes on Cloud's face.

'I— yes, some of them,' Cloud said. Sephiroth turned his face away and started to tremble, and for a moment Cloud thought that he actually might be _crying_, but then he glanced back and there was a smile on his face.

'Oh, that explains everything now, doesn't it?' Sephiroth said.

'It… does?'

'You knew what these books said,' Sephiroth said. 'You'd had a lifetime in Nibelheim to read them. But when you came to Midgar, you chose to tell me nothing about them… you even tried to keep me from coming to Nibelheim at all, to prevent me from ever discovering my mother…'

'They're _lies_!' Cloud cried. 'You're not a monster; you're a human. You're a person, just like me and Zack—'

'Get out,' Sephiroth hissed, and although he spoke at half the volume of Cloud, his words cut right across him.

'No!' Cloud steadied himself, ready for an attack, because Sephiroth looked absolutely ready to tear his throat out. 'I'm not leaving until you _listen_ to me!'

Sephiroth cringed, and Cloud knew why. She was speaking to him.

'Jenova's not your mother,' he said. 'Don't listen to her; she's _not your mother_!'

Sephiroth lunged at him and he side-stepped, but not far enough to avoid the snatching hand that came immediately after. Sephiroth grabbed him by collar and dragged him to the door.

'Get _out_!'

'Let me _go_!' Cloud shoved at Sephiroth's chest and clawed at his wrist, but the man was made of stone. 'I want to _help_, Sephiroth, let me _go_!'

Sephiroth tried to throw him through the door, but Cloud caught hold of the frame and hauled himself back inside. He slammed the door shut behind his back and started to pace closer to Sephiroth, arms open and unthreatening.

'She's not your mother, Sephiroth. Hojo lied to you. Stop and _think_ for just _five minutes_ will you?'

The only response he received was for Sephiroth to slowly reach towards the nearby desk and pick up Masamune. Cloud's chest ached as if from an old wound.

'I can't fight you,' he said.

'Then leave.'

'You won't hurt me.'

Sephiroth jabbed forwards and Cloud had to dart back a few steps again to avoid the tip of the sword. Sephiroth's face was a picture of pain and fury. Her cells weren't even in Cloud's body yet, but he could almost hear Jenova screaming in Sephiroth's head nonetheless.

'Don't listen to her,' he repeated, as gently as he could while struggling to keep his voice from shaking. 'She's nothing; just an angry monster that landed on the Planet long ago. She's not your mother; not even an Ancient. Let me he—'

The only reason he didn't get skewered the second time Sephiroth attacked was because someone had grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him out of the way. He was dragged, yelping, out of the door and pulled back behind a body much larger than his.

Zack, who must have snuck in while Cloud was talking, planted himself in between his two friends.

'Are you going to kill me too, Sephiroth?' he snapped. Sephiroth slammed the door closed. There was a heavy _thunk_ as the bar was dropped over it, for all intents and purposes locking Sephiroth within the room, alone with Jenova.

'I told you not to go in there, man,' Zack said, but Cloud was already rushing forwards to start hammering at the door.

'What've you done?' he cried.

'Uh, saved your arse,' Zack said. 'You're welcome.'

Cloud didn't even hear him. This door wasn't as strong as the one at the reactor had been; it was only made of wood. He could break this one down, and good Planet was he ever going to break it down.

'Sephiroth! Let me in! _Sephiroth_!'

'Dude, he is not letting anyone back in there.'

'SEPHIROTH!'

'Cloud.'

'SHE'S NOT YOUR MOTHER!'

'Cloud.'

'_LISTEN TO ME_!'

'Cloud!'

'JENOVA IS NOT YOUR MOTHER!'

'Cloud, for fuck's sake shut up!' Zack effortlessly snatched Cloud away from the door and placed him down a few feet away. 'You sound like a crazy person!'

Cloud gasped for a few moments, and finally gained control of his frustration enough to stop from flinging himself at the door again. He jabbed a finger at it and said,

'When he comes back out of that room, be ready to fight him like he's the most dangerous madman in the world.' He swallowed. 'Because he will be.'

He spun around and charged down the passageway.

'And where are you going?' Zack called after him. He looked back over his shoulder.

'To warn everybody!'

* * *

'Tifa! Tifa, wait!'

She hesitated in the town square. She had a bag on her shoulder; she'd probably just been to the shop, and didn't look very impressed to be stopped by a masked Shinra employee on her way home.

'What is it?' she said. Cloud got the impression that she hadn't quite forgiven him for keeping her out of the reactor and then getting so angry when _he_ wasn't allowed in. It probably seemed hypocritical to her, and someday Cloud would explain to her why he had done it. Right now, though, he couldn't care less.

'Everyone has to evacuate.'

Her face was blank.

'What?'

'Everyone in Nibelheim has to evacuate the village, _right now_.'

Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag, and Cloud was uncomfortably reminded of the angry wrinkles on Sephiroth's gloves.

'Is it the monsters? Are they coming?' She wailed. 'I thought you fixed the reactor!'

'No, the reactor's fine. It's Sephiroth.'

Once again, Tifa's face went blank. She shook her head, clearly thinking she had misheard.

'Sorry, S-Sephiroth?'

'He's… look; he's just not safe to be around right now, okay?' Cloud said.

'But Shinra sent him and Zack to protect us!' Tifa protested. 'Is this a SOLDIER thing? Is Zack okay?'

'Zack is fine – well, he's got a bruise, but he's fine – really.' Cloud gripped Tifa's arm. 'You have got to get everyone out of the village, right now, or they're going to get hurt.'

At last, she nodded and hurried home. Cloud looked at the door to his own house and considered going inside, saying goodbye to his mother before she got shepherded off into the mountains. But there would be time for that later, when they had all survived Sephiroth's psychopathic rage.

And they all _were_ going to survive, this time. Tifa knew her way around the mountains; she'd find somewhere safe to put everyone. Meanwhile, Cloud had other things to do.

* * *

He remembered why he hated Nibelheim when he finally found PHS reception halfway up one of the mountains behind Shinra Mansion. It wasn't even his phone; he didn't have one. He'd borrowed Zack's.

He skipped through the names in Zack's contacts list, stomach clenching at the first name – Aerith – until he got to the one he wanted.

It rang ten times and then went to answer phone. Cloud called again, with the same result, and then twice more.

'_We are sorry, but the person you are trying to contact is not available at this time. Please leave a message after the tone._'

'Pick up your fucking phone!'

There was a click, and:

'Director Lazard speaking. I've picked up my fucking phone. What do you want, Zack?'

'Lazard! It's not Zack, it's Cloud.'

'Cloud…?'

'Cloud Strife. I'm not in SOLDIER; I'm in the Shinra Militia. I'm working on the Nibelheim Mission with Zack. I've borrowed his PHS.'

'What seems to be the problem, Cadet Strife?'

'It's Mister Sephiroth, sir.'

'He's injured?' There was a definite change in tone with those words; Cloud could practically _hear_ Lazard sitting up in concern.

'He's sick,' Cloud said. There was a pause.

'First Class SOLDIER Sephiroth is… sick?' Lazard said, clearly expecting a tasteless prank of some kind. This was Zack's phone, after all.

'Very sick,' Cloud said firmly. 'Zack is watching him. We have limited medical supplies and our only transportation at present is a truck. It would take hours to get him even as far as North Corel, let alone Midgar. I'm requesting an immediate extraction.'

'Granted,' Lazard said instantly. He was probably thinking that if a disease was bad enough to make _Sephiroth_ sick, it needed to be dealt with as fast as humanly possible. 'I'm sending a helicopter. It will be there sometime tonight.'

He was just about to hang up, so Cloud added:

'Sir! Sephiroth, he's… I think he's hallucinating.' It was amazing, he thought, how easily the lies came to him in times of crisis. 'He's already attacked two of his teammates.'

'We'll be prepared,' Lazard said tightly. 'And we'll keep you posted. Keep watching Sephiroth. Call if his condition worsens.'

'Yes, sir.'

Cloud flipped the phone closed. Only a few more hours. This incident was going to be averted if it killed him.

* * *

'How is he?' Cloud asked, upon re-entering the Shinra Mansion. Zack was no longer standing down in the passageway. He was lounging in the upstairs bedroom, near enough the secret passageway that he could meet Sephiroth if he came out, but far enough away to show that he really wasn't all that concerned about him.

'Quiet,' Zack said. 'Honestly, I think he's gotten over it now. He was shouting for a while and breaking things, and then I could _swear_ he was laughing or something, and then he just went quiet and he's been quiet ever since.'

'He was laughing?' Cloud said.

'Well, if it was anyone else I would've have guessed crying but, y'know, I don't think Sephiroth even _can_ cry, do you?' Zack's eyes creased with anxiety. 'I mean, I've seen him in like the worst pain ever and his eyes don't even water. I'm not even sure if he has tear ducts.'

Cloud sighed.

'Why don't you go to bed? I'll keep an eye on him.'

'What are you going to do if Sephiroth storms out to murder everyone?' Zack asked, but it was put playfully. He had no idea.

'Come and wake you up,' Cloud said simply.

* * *

He got a text at four in the morning. The message claimed that it had been sent at eleven o'clock in the evening, which meant that it had been struggling with Nibelheim's weak signal for five hours. It read:

_Helicopter encountered technical issues. Will arrive in the morning._

Cloud curled up in a ball, rested his forehead on his knees, and tried hard not to fall asleep.

* * *

He was woken up by Zack carrying him bridal-style out of the room and towards a bed.

'What time is it?' he muttered.

'Eight thirty-five AM,' Zack said. 'You suck at keeping watch. Go to sleep.'

He dumped Cloud only half-gently on a bed that creaked loudly at the addition of even Cloud's pathetic weight.

'Watch Sephiroth,' Cloud said. He grabbed Zack's sleeve to stop him from leaving. 'There's a helicopter coming for us. They know Seph's sick. Watch him.'

'He's still locked up in the basement. He's not going anywhere,' Zack said.

* * *

Cloud regretted staying up all night. He had known that Sephiroth wouldn't emerge until the third evening; why had he thought it was necessary to guard his door until then? He was panicking, and it was making him act stupid.

He woke up at half past five in the evening, and leapt out of bed. He never usually slept for so long; eight hours was plenty for him. All of the stress was probably tiring him out more than he knew.

He ran down the hallway and slipped on the floorboards, because Zack must have taken his shoes off while he was sleeping and he was only wearing his socks.

The helicopter should have come by now. Why would Zack have left him asleep if the helicopter had come?

Maybe it _had_ come, Cloud thought. Helicopters were only so big, and it had to fit a furious Sephiroth in it with enough drugs to keep him sedated all the way to Midgar. There probably hadn't been enough room for Zack and Cloud to get on board as well; they'd just have to make a longer trip home while Hojo explained everything to Sephiroth and fixed the voices in his head—

Cloud rethought his idea and ran faster. Really, he wanted _anyone_ but Hojo to explain Jenova to Sephiroth.

He burst in the door and there was Zack, sitting on a chair and polishing up the Buster Sword.

'The helicopter—'

'It hasn't come yet,' Zack said, 'and Sephiroth is still sulking downstairs. You know, I just realised he hasn't eaten in three days. I offered him a sandwich but he just kind of snarled through the doorway so I left him alone. He's going to be _starving_ when he comes out.'

Cloud had only caught the first few words of that rant.

'The helicopter hasn't come yet?'

'It's only half five. There's like, six and a half hours left of today still.'

'It was meant to come _this morning_!' Cloud screeched. Zack frowned.

'Oh.'

The phone in Cloud's pocket chose that moment to start beeping. He rifled it out – how had he managed to sleep on it? – and flipped it open.

_Message from LAZARD_

'Hey, is that my phone?' Zack said. Cloud opened the message up.

_Engineers set helicopter on fire trying to fix it. Sending another ASAP. Will arrive tonight._

Cloud closed the phone and put his head in his hands.

'Helicopter's coming tonight,' he said. '_Tonight_.'

All of the energy he'd had running here from the bedroom was gone. He wondered again whether he could get away with waking Vincent up, and getting him to talk it through with Sephiroth. Then again, Sephiroth wouldn't even listen to _Cloud_; why would he listen to a strange man who'd been sleeping in a coffin for thirty odd years?

Maybe Vincent would give Cloud a spare coffin to sleep in for the next few years. That felt a more reasonable option than trying to stop this tragedy: to just sleep right on through it.

But he'd gotten this far.

'Okay,' he said, handing Zack's phone back to him. 'How's the village evacuation going?'

Zack stared at Cloud as though he'd started speaking Wutaian.

'Ev… ac… uation?'

Cloud managed not to scream, but he wasn't sure how. Zack had been up in the Shinra Mansion watching over Sephiroth all day. He probably hadn't even noticed what was going on in the village. Everyone had probably snuck away already, leaving a clear path for Cloud and Zack to storm down to the reactor right now, hack Jenova into little bits, take the bits back to Midgar in separate containers, attach them to one of Palmer's rockets and send them out of the atmosphere.

The thought of dismembering and blasting Jenova away filled him with peace.

'I'm going down into the village,' Cloud said. 'Just stay here and keep an eye on Sephiroth for a bit longer, okay?'

'You got it.' Zack mock-saluted his friend. 'Don't forget your helmet.'

He chucked the item at Cloud, who nodded his thanks and shoved it on, although he doubted there'd be any need to wear it now no one was left in the village. When he glanced at Zack, it was clear from his expression that he really thought that Cloud should be the one safely locked up in a basement, not Sephiroth.

It was quiet outside the mansion doors, but when Cloud got to the gates—

'Is everything okay?'

Zangan stood there with his arms folded, along with Tifa's father and a man Cloud did not know the name of. He came up short some way away from them, and they all watched him expectantly, thinking he'd come bearing news.

'Is something wrong with the SOLDIERs?' Zangan pressed. Cloud opened his mouth to answer, but all he managed to say was,

'You're _still here_?'

'We're not leaving until we know everything's okay,' Tifa's father said.

'No!' Cloud said. 'Everything is _not_ okay! Everything is _horribly wrong_! That's why you were supposed to leave!'

'Kid, there are monsters all over these mountains,' Zangan said. 'No one wants to go running away from the safety of their homes when they don't even know if there's really a problem.'

'There's a problem,' Cloud snarled, wishing for the hundredth time that he had the strength now that he would in his twenties, full of mako. He wanted nothing more than to punch these idiots out and lead all the villagers up into the mountains himself. 'The problem is Sephiroth is on the verge of a violent mental breakdown and you've left _innocent people within reach of him_.'

Zangan did not look impressed.

'Young man, I'm a martial arts instructor. I've taught people all over the Planet how to defend themselves. I think I can handle one man gone wacko.'

'You think that you can protect an entire village from the greatest First Class SOLDIER who's ever lived?' Cloud said. 'The man who, incidentally, won his fame by defeating _entire armies_ in Wutai single handed? The man who hasn't lost a single battle against a fellow, mako-pumped SOLDIER, since he was a teenager?'

Zangan began to look uncomfortable, but his arms remained folded and his stance was still defensive. He went to speak, but Cloud's voice doubled in volume to speak over him:

'You are absolutely confident that you could fight Shinra's most elite warrior and come out victorious, without any collateral damage… but you think it would be too dangerous to take the villagers up into the mountains where there are a few monsters, less than half as strong as Sephiroth?'

The three men looked decidedly sheepish, but not particularly afraid. Cloud could see why; death threats – even regarding Sephiroth – weren't exactly frightening when they were coming from a boy half your height, whose voice still occasionally broke when he talked too loud.

On the other hand, Cloud was really too angry to give a damn whether he was frightening them or not. His chest ached from how hard his heart was beating, and he wasn't sure that he wouldn't be sick. _He_ was frightened.

'If you have someone you love in that village,' he spat, 'you should probably go down to them and explain why it's your fault they're about to die.'

'We're not moving until we know it's safe,' the other man, the one Cloud didn't know, said. He pushed past him.

'It's not safe,' he said. 'But suit yourselves.'

Nobody was outdoors, down in the village. They had all locked themselves up in their homes to be safe from the monsters, unwittingly making it nice and easy for say, an angry human being, to burn them to death in their sleep. It was getting late now: late enough that the sun had gone down behind the surrounding mountains and the village was sitting in the last grey lights of the day. Cloud couldn't remember what time the incident actually started, but he didn't think it would be long.

'Mum!' he slapped his hand on the door, and reflected that he'd been doing a lot of banging on doors recently. 'Mum, let me in!'

There was a scuffle inside and she opened the door with a worried expression.

'Sweetheart, is that you?'

Cloud grabbed her wrist and pulled her outside.

'It's me,' he said, and lifted his helmet a little with his free hand to prove it to her. 'Mum, we've got to get out of the village, right now.'

'Are monsters coming?' she gasped, allowing herself to be pulled along through the square.

'Pretty much,' Cloud said, thinking by now that there was no use trying to explain. His mother, however, suddenly dug her feet down and snatched her hand back.

'We'd be safer waiting in the house,' she told him. 'We've gotten monsters here before—'

'Not this one,' Cloud said. 'It's going to tear right through every building in the village. We have to get out, _now_, and stay away all night. Come on. Please.'

She looked like she believed him, which relieved Cloud so much it almost hurt, because he was getting really sick of everyone thinking that he was the crazy one when, at least at this point, he actually wasn't. But her eyes were flicking about with indecision, and she seemed happier to flee back to her home than to run into the dangerous mountains.

'We have to warn everyone else,' she said.

'They won't believe us. Zangan and Tifa's dad were supposed to evacuate everybody, but they think they can handle it. They're wrong, Mum, honestly—' he added, because she'd begun to look dubious at the idea that such respected men were unruffled at the approach of this 'monster', '—I've seen it before. Zack wouldn't be able to beat it.'

'The SOLDIER you came here with?' Now she was worried again.

'Yes, now let's _go_!'

She took a few long breaths, as though she was planning to plunge herself underwater. Finally, she said,

'All right. I'll get us some coats; it'll be freezing up in the mountains all night, and dead of cold is just as dead as killed by monsters. You go knocking on doors; try to make them believe you. Keep your helmet on: people respect a Shinra uniform. Get everyone up and out. Go, go!'

She shooed him towards the other doors and dashed back inside the house.

Cloud ran across the square, ran to the first house and started banging on doors, windows; anything. When he turned around, the sun was set. The village was dark. He brought a hand up to his helmet and turned the night-vision on, bathing everything an even brighter red that it had been before.

There was a _crash_ from the hill up by the Shinra Mansion, and someone was yelling.

The Nibelheim Incident had started.


	12. Normal Everyday People

**[AN:** Well, it's about 12:07 here in England, which makes it technically Sunday, so here's a slightly earlier than usual update. We're getting close to the end, but we aren't there yet! Hang in there, everyone!**]**

* * *

**Chapter Twelve**

'_Do you know any nice people? Y'know, normal everyday people, not power-crazed nutters trying to take over the universe?'_

Cloud wasn't even sure how or where the fire started; it was just suddenly _there_, springing up from the buildings on the north side of the village and billowing out like an inflating balloon, seizing up one roof, and then the next and the next until every building in the village was decorated with twitching, hissing flames.

He gave up on knocking and kicked down doors to let the screaming families out, for all the good it would do them. His mother came out of their own home – the rooftop already eaten up with fire – with her arms full of coats they wouldn't need.

'Get out of the village!' Cloud bellowed at the few people who'd thus far managed to stumble from their homes, coughing and eyes watering from the smoke. He pointed to the southern exit. 'Get out and run into the mountains!'

They scrambled to obey him, and didn't see the fire materia that came hurling over their heads.

'Get down!' Cloud screamed. He grabbed his mother by the shoulders and practically tackled her to the ground, crouching half over her body in protection. His eyes were closed, but he felt the blast of the materia against his back, the rumble of the earth under the explosion and heard the screams of the villagers, who now had nowhere to escape to.

Only once he was certain it was finished did he glance up, and over his mother's shoulders he saw Sephiroth.

Every time he had looked Sephiroth in the eyes until now, it had been remarkable to Cloud how calm and reasonable he'd seemed. Now, he realised that his memories of Sephiroth's insanity were barely shadows of the reality. Everything had been stripped away: all of the layers of narcissism and logic and pride – and genuine, if subdued, care for the people around him… the man left behind was raw and hollow. His skin was as white as the ashes that flitted around him, and there were black bruises under his eyes that would never leave after today. The brightness of the fire had reduced his pupils to slits as thin and sharp as the sword in his hand, but his eyes were wide, as though he was half-blind and struggling to see.

Cloud stood up, pulling his mother with him, and gently pushed her behind him. It was only when he saw the blood on Masamune that he remembered he had no weapons.

'It's me, Sephiroth,' he said, even though the creature in front of him barely looked like Sephiroth anymore. He tore his helmet off so his face was visible. 'It's Cloud.'

Sephiroth flicked his wrist and took a swipe at his stomach, and Cloud jumped backwards, almost knocking his mother down in the process. Over his shoulder, Cloud cried,

'Run!'

It had only taken a second, but by the time he looked back, Sephiroth was inches from his face. He barely saw the pommel of Masamune before it connected with the side of his head. The fire disappeared, and so did the screaming, terrified voices of the villagers. As Cloud fell, he thought for a moment that everything was so black he must have been swallowed up in Sephiroth's coat.

* * *

'Hey?'

Cloud rolled his eyes open. He was sweating, and so hot it hurt. The light was too bright to make anything out; he could just about see the top of Zack's dark head. Were they in Costa del Sol again? Had he fallen asleep on the beach?

Things came a little more into focus, and Cloud realised that the light was orange, and there were dark patches that swam and throbbed around his eyes. Nibelheim… he was in Nibelheim… and…

'Seph… iroth…' he choked. His throat felt like it had been sandpapered. Zack put a hand on his shoulder, but then left him without saying anything else.

He could hear voices some way away. One was definitely Zangan, but it took him a moment to recognise Zack's voice when his tone was so sombre. He didn't want Zack to sound sombre; he wanted him to sound light-hearted and happy. He wanted Zack to come back and help him up to his feet, to dust him off and laugh about going back to Midgar to see Aerith soon.

_What I wouldn't give for a white mage…_

He had no materia on him, and no potions. His head felt like it had hole three inches wide in the side of it, which it probably did, he realised when he touched his temple and found blood.

If he'd felt sick before, he felt like hell now. The ground slid around under his boots as he rolled over and stood up. The feeling was not unlike trying to walk through the train in Midgar when it was still moving, except that all the things he could possibly have used to steady himself were on fire. He managed to balance nonetheless, and didn't even fall over when he had to lean over his knees to throw up. He realised that he hadn't eaten in almost a day, and discovered quickly that throwing up with nothing but bile and acid in your stomach is much worse than throwing up when it's full of food.

When his stomach settled enough, he stood and surveyed his once home village. The buildings had been burned down to black skeletons, and yet the fire hadn't given up yet. It was still burning, almost as strong as before: enough to make Cloud feel like he was breathing coal. There were grey lumps scattered across the ground, in various states of still looking human. Cloud didn't look at their faces.

'Reactor,' he muttered, voice as rough as a scab. He had to get to the reactor, before Sephiroth could get away with Jenova's head – or any of the rest of her. Tifa was there, in trouble, and so was Zack. Zack would last longer than her, but Sephiroth was still going to kill him when he could, and Cloud didn't mean to stand around and watch Nibelheim burn down while he did.

_No,_ said a voice in his head, awfully reminiscent of the voice of Jenova. _You have to keep Zack alive until Shinra can kill him outside Midgar._

He snatched up his helmet – for God's sake, why had he taken it off? – and staggered forwards. This _wasn't_ going to end the way he thought it was. He was going to get there in time to save Zack and Tifa from Sephiroth, and to save Sephiroth from Jenova, and then they were all going to go to Midgar together to tear Hojo's limbs off for ever thinking that the Jenova Project was a good idea in the first place.

It was the most painful walk he had ever done. Last time, it had been his fury at Sephiroth that had driven him all the way to the reactor. This time, if he was angry at all, it was at himself. He'd fucked up. He was supposed to change this _before_ now, and he hadn't done it, and now everyone in Nibelheim – his own mother – were taking the punishment for his incompetence.

He'd hoped to catch up with Tifa or Zack, on his way there, but it seemed he'd been unconscious too long. When he got to the reactor, the doors were unlocked, and Tifa's father was dead inside. Cloud wished that he could let himself believe it was the man's own stupidity that had gotten him killed.

He stepped over the body and into the reactor's core.

The room was already beaten up. The lines of pods were dented and scratched, and the stairs intersecting them were scuffed. Tifa was gasping at their base. She was only lucky, considering her fall down the stairs, that her back hadn't been broken. _Lucky_. Yes. Further up, he could see the edge of Zack's body, smashed into one of the pods.

The doorway marked _JENOVA_ was open.

'Tifa,' he said, hurrying up to her. She looked up at him blearily, without recognition and, against his better judgement considering how close Sephiroth was, he removed his helmet for her. Despite her obvious pain, she smiled.

'Cloud,' she muttered. 'I knew you'd come… you promised.'

'I know,' he said, taking her hand when she lifted it to him. 'I'm here.'

She shouldn't have tried to fight Sephiroth on her own. Tifa had always had too much confidence. Then again, he'd never had enough, so he supposed it balanced out.

'Cloud?'

Zack was awake, and he somehow sounded even worse than Cloud. That was probably the effect of getting your arse kicked by the greatest SOLDIER who ever lived.

Cloud squeezed Tifa's hand and then let it go so that he could pick her up and tuck her out of the way. Her head lolled back as he lifted her. Zack had come to, and she had passed out.

Tifa as much out of harm's way as he could put her for now, Cloud hurried up to Zack.

'Cloud,' Zack smiled to see him, but the expression faded quickly. 'You were right.'

Cloud couldn't think of anything worth saying to that. Zack raised a shaking hand, in much the same way as Tifa had, but he wasn't looking for comfort. He gestured out behind Cloud, towards the Buster Sword that lay at the top of the stairs, and said,

'Finish Sephiroth off.'

Cloud nodded tightly, and made his way up the stairs. He knelt and grabbed the Buster Sword, and this time actually managed to lift it, although it weighed so heavily on his arms it was all he could do not to drag the tip along the ground.

'Hey,' Zack said. 'Don't hurt yourself this time.'

'I won't,' Cloud tried to reply, but he couldn't actually force the sounds out hard enough to make words. Thoughts of six-foot-long katanas and how much they hurt when speared through the human body filled his mind.

He'd like to think that it wasn't going to happen this time, but he was all out of hope for changing a damn thing now.

He barely took a breath as he crept into the Jenova Room. He could hear Sephiroth talking to his 'mother', but he blocked out the meaning of the words. That didn't matter anymore. Let Sephiroth go insane, for all he cared. It had all happened before.

He made it up the walkway; got right up behind his enemy. Sephiroth was so distracted, staring at the vacant, blue-hued face of his adoptive mother, forehead pressed against the glass to be close to her, that he didn't even notice as Cloud hefted the Buster Sword up and stabbed forward.

He noticed when the blade cleaved a hole in his ribcage, slicing far enough through the bones and organs of the greatest SOLDIER alive to crack the glass of Jenova's tank. Sephiroth's upper body heaved for a moment, and he made a small _hrk_ noise of distress, but that was all. Either he was so far gone he didn't care about pain anymore, or he just couldn't feel it at all.

Cloud's arms shook as he battled with the limitations of his own body to keep the sword up, although having the blade wedged inside Sephiroth's torso was helping.

He heaved the sword out and took several careful steps back. Enough to be out of Masamune's reach. Getting out of Sephiroth's way didn't seem to be a problem, however; without the Buster Sword pinning him to the glass tank, the SOLDIER's legs folded in under him and he collapsed on the floor. Cloud let his sword drop so that the tip rested on the ground for a moment. Between the exhaustion, the head wound and the smoke inhalation, he was going to collapse himself before long. He wasn't going to leave this room, though. He'd made that mistake last time. Tonight, he intended to destroy Sephiroth _before_ he got his hands on Jenova.

In that vein, he hefted the Buster Sword up once more, charged forward, and heaved all of the strength of and weight in his body behind a swing at Sephiroth's head.

Sephiroth was on his feet and turned around faster than Cloud could see, swiping Masamune to block the attack. The thin blade was somehow sturdy enough to parry an attack from the much larger Buster Sword – and then Sephiroth's other hand came up and punched him in the solar plexus.

The air escaped Cloud's chest so hard it almost hurt more than slamming into the wall on the other side of the room. The Buster Sword crashed somewhere out of his immediate reach – which actually wasn't that far away, because it was all Cloud could do now to remember how breathing worked.

There was a banging sound across the room, which meant that Sephiroth was trying to break Jenova's tank open, but Cloud couldn't get up to stop him because he couldn't feel any of his limbs. The only thing he could feel was how agonisingly empty his lungs were, and how broken his ribs were, and how likely it was that he was about to die right here, in the past, and never get to see Tifa or Zack or Aerith or anyone else ever again.

He managed to clench his fists, sipping tiny breaths of air, and then shift his arms as he swallowed down bigger and bigger puffs, and he was starting to feel like he might actually be able to get up on his feet again sometime in the near future when he opened his eyes and saw Sephiroth standing right in front of him, Jenova's head in one hand and Masamune in the other.

He hadn't even heard the tank smash, but it must have, because it was broken into jagged shards behind Sephiroth, and Jenova's upper body was drenched in blue blood from her beloved son hacking her head off. Sephiroth was dripping with blood, too: blue and red. His shoulders were hunched and his breathing choked, and it occurred to Cloud that he _could_ still feel pain after all, just before it occurred to him what Sephiroth was about to do next.

'Fuck—'

He rolled aside as Sephiroth stabbed, just avoiding the end of Masamune. He wobbled to his feet faster than he thought he should, considering how difficult he was still finding it to suck air down his throat, but Sephiroth was probably finding it harder and he could still fight better than Cloud.

Sephiroth didn't move for a moment, and for that moment Cloud actually looked him full in the face. For all that this man looked, at best, like only the ghost of Sephiroth, Cloud's tongue tasted suddenly bitter at the knowledge that _he_ had cleaved that hole in his friend's stomach. Without a sword in them, his hands began to tremble.

'It was _different_ this time,' he said. Sephiroth's wounds must have been hindering him more than Cloud had thought, because he wasn't taking the opportunity to attack. He actually took a tremulous step back.

'Why would you do this?' Cloud cried, opening his arms to gesture to everything: the blood on the walls, the smashed glass; the distant, burning remains of Nibelheim. 'You weren't alone this time; it wasn't just you with her screaming in your head. You had _us_!'

Sephiroth jerked and Cloud flinched, but there was no attack. His voice rose in volume, and he could barely control what he was saying anymore. All he wanted to do was scream, and tear everything away. He wanted to go back to Costa del Sol, and the Gold Saucer, and to do everything that he had been doing for the last two years with Zack and Sephiroth, without spending every waking moment planning what he had to do next to prevent this disaster, and every sleeping moment having nightmares about it.

'You had _Zack_! And Aerith! You had—' his voice cracked, '—me.'

His eyes were watering and he brushed the tears away fiercely, because if he started crying now he wouldn't be able to see Sephiroth properly to keep fighting him. But even Sephiroth was looking weary now, arms sagging and head lowering. His fingers were loosening in Jenova's hair.

'I was supposed to change everything; I was supposed to save you from this. All of this.' Cloud just let the next tears come, because Sephiroth was about to fall down anyway. 'It was supposed to be different this time. I'm so sorry.'

He pressed a hand against his eyes, more to ease the pain in his head than to wipe the tears away, and then Sephiroth lunged and stabbed Masaume into his stomach.

'Ugh!'

Cloud now understood why Sephiroth hadn't screamed. You just couldn't; everything hurt too much to scream.

'Don't… test me,' Sephiroth growled, and Cloud thought,

_I don't need to. I know what happens next._

Sephiroth shifted his shoulder and managed to turn Masamune so that Cloud was lifted right off of the ground. The already unbearable pain somehow became worse, sending flashes of white into Cloud's vision and spikes of hurt right up through his spine and into his shoulders and chest, because his whole body was balanced on that one tiny, torn open spot in his torso.

For the first time in this fight, Cloud had true conviction, if only to end this torturous feeling. He raised his quivering arms and grasped the blade with both hands. The edge bit into his fingers but he really didn't care because it was nothing compared to the pain spearing through the rest of his body, so he tightened them enough that they wouldn't slip on the blood and drew himself slowly downwards, howling as he did it out of rage as much as agony.

Sephiroth spent a moment too long staring in shock: by the time he was ready to react, Cloud's feet were on the floor and he was twisting his body – and the sword with it – and Sephiroth was thrown from his own feet and down into the depths of the reactor core.

Into the Lifestream.

Cloud's vision was blurring and his knees were starting to buckle. His fingers fumbled on the sword and somehow managed to draw it out of his body, leaving a bleeding hole behind. He stuffed his fist against it to keep some of the blood in, and tried to make his way out of the Jenova Room, back towards Zack and Tifa. He could still get Zack out of here now. He could still change _one_ life…

He fell backwards and everything went white.


	13. Good Things and Bad Things

**Chapter Thirteen**

'_I told you: you can't go back and change time. You mourn but you live.'_

'Cloud? Can you hear me Cloud?'

'What the fuck was he doin'?'

'I don't know. He must have tried to turn the machine on. Cloud? Cloud? Come on, wake up!'

Warmth and softness suddenly passed through Cloud's body. It was like being wrapped in soft fur blankets on an icy day. He heard a whooshing, tinkling noise, and realised that someone had used a cure materia on him.

He'd survived. He had no idea how, but he'd survived and someone had come to get him before Hojo and the Turks arrived. Sephiroth was dead, but if Cloud was okay then Zack and Tifa were probably okay as well.

In fact…

'Cloud?'

'Tifa?'

She sighed in relief as he opened his eyes and blinked up at her.

'How're you feeling?' she said. He didn't quite hear; he was too distracted by her face. Her cheekbones were more prominent, her puppy-fat gone. He shifted a little, and kept staring.

'You look older,' he said. Tifa frowned and, behind her, someone burst into loud guffaws of laughter.

'He's delirious,' Tifa sniffed. 'I do _not_ look old.'

'Not _old_,' Cloud said, sitting up carefully. 'Old_er_. You look grown up.'

He rubbed his head, covering his eyes with both hands, but he wasn't really hurting anymore. Thank the Planet for cure materia.

'Well,' Tifa said in a slow, baffled tone, 'I am grown up.'

He glanced out from under one hand and realised that she was right. This was not a fifteen-year-old girl. This was a young woman, in her early twenties at least. He looked up over her shoulder and saw not Zack, but Cid, laughing his lungs out.

'I'm back,' he said, and actually felt queasy at the very idea. 'I can't be back; I had more to do!'

'Cloud,' Tifa touched his shoulder. 'You were messing around with this old Shinra machine. You blew yourself up.'

'I combined materia,' he said. 'I went back in time.'

Cid, who had stopped by now, starting laughing all over again.

'I think you have a concussion,' Tifa said kindly. 'We need to get you home.'

'No, no, I'm not concussed, I'm _telling_ you, I went back in time! I swear it—'

'What are we doing up here?' Tifa said. Her tone was stern: it wasn't that she didn't know. She wanted to test whether _he_ knew. Cloud stopped, thought for a moment, and couldn't come up with an answer. It had been _two years_ since he'd come up here with them; the last thing he'd been doing was fighting Sephiroth to the death. He had other things to worry about.

'That's what I thought,' Tifa said, to his glazed expression. 'What day is it?'

'The first of October,' Cloud said immediately. Tifa's eyes widened, and even Cid went quiet in recognition of the date of the Nibelheim Incident. Cloud shook his head. 'No, wait, that's where I _was_… it's the, um…'

'It's February, Cloud. It's the twenty-third of February.'

'Oh.'

'You're concussed. I'm going to give you another cure materia, and then we're going home. Okay?'

Cloud gave up.

'… Okay.'

* * *

The weather was grey and heavy, the sky full of storm clouds. They yielded no rain, but just sat, thick and opaque over the rooftops, and made the city feel dark and trapped. Denzel and Marlene had been playing in the street, but it was getting cold and Tifa had called them inside. Now Cloud had nothing to watch.

He shifted in his seat by the window and pulled the duvet closer around his shoulders. Tifa wouldn't let him out of bed without it. She'd barely let him out of bed at all.

The doctor hadn't been able to find anything wrong with Cloud, and no amount of potions or Cure Materia seemed to make any difference. Once, he remembered, when he and Tifa were children, a virus had spread around Nibelheim. Tifa had been ill for a week, coughing and sneezing and aching all over, but when Cloud had got it he hadn't felt sick at all. He had only felt tired: so tired that getting up out of bed to eat had warranted an hour's nap every day.

He wondered if he had the same virus now. It certainly felt the same, only this time he was getting the headaches as well, and the painkillers the doctor had left didn't seem to touch them. At least Tifa was a kinder nurse than the ones that had been employed by Shinra. In the last fortnight, he hadn't seen a single needle.

He had given up on trying to talk to anyone about being in the past. After a few hours of trying and being told that he was hurt and he needed to calm down, he'd realised that he had nothing to tell them. Nothing had changed. He knew that his history of mental health wasn't exactly flawless (or, as Cid put it, he was 'mad as a sack of badgers'), but of this he was absolutely certain: he had been given a second chance, and he had wasted it.

Knowing that, it was easier not to think. It was easier to imagine it was all a hallucination; something brought on by being smacked too hard in the head.

There was a knock on the door and Tifa came in bearing soup.

'How are you feeling?' she asked, passing him a bowl. 'How's your head?'

'Took some painkillers.' He shrugged, gesturing to the pack sitting next to him on the windowsill. 'Didn't make much difference.'

'I'll call the doctor again; maybe we can get something stronger,' Tifa suggested. Cloud nodded, although he honestly doubted it would make any difference _how_ strong the painkillers were at this point. Tifa hovered where she was, watching him as he gingerly sipped at the soup. He glanced up but she didn't say anything. Usually by now she'd have run off to take care of the customers – or the children.

'Cloud,' Tifa said suddenly, 'what was that "time travel" stuff all about?'

He looked up, spoon still half-dipped in the bowl.

'W-what?'

She took a seat on the edge of his bed. The bar downstairs must have been quiet; she very rarely abandoned it in the middle of the day like this.

'When you first woke up, you spent the whole walk home trying to convince us you'd gone back in time, but then you haven't mentioned it since. I mean … it _was_ just a concussion, right? You know that.'

'Oh.' He turned back to the window again. 'Yeah, a concussion. I guess.'

Tifa drew her knees up to her chest, balancing her heels on the edge of the mattress.

'You don't sound too sure.'

'Doesn't matter,' Cloud said. 'You're probably right. I was hurt.'

'And if I'm wrong?'

Cloud turned back to his soup, but for some reason he didn't feel like eating.

'Then that's even worse,' he said.

'Stranger things have happened to us, I suppose,' Tifa said, but she sounded more like she was entertaining a fantasy than considering Cloud's story seriously. 'We weren't in the room. You could have gone back in time, I guess, and then just … reappeared?'

Cloud put the soup down on the windowsill and pulled his duvet closer again. Despite his mako-pumped, stronger, more muscular body, he felt more fragile now than any time when he'd been stuck in the past.

'I was sent back to change something,' he said. 'To "change one life," she said.'

Tifa stretched out and then crossed her legs and leaned back on the bed, making herself comfortable for a long story. From her expression, he couldn't tell whether she was really interested or just humouring him.

'She?'

Cloud looked apologetic.

'Aerith.'

Tifa blinked slowly, like someone trying to prove to themselves that what they were seeing was really there.

'Aerith sent you back in time to change one life,' Tifa said. 'Hers?'

'No.' Cloud shook his head. 'Aerith didn't send me back. I think she just explained the rules, and I don't think it was her life I was meant to save. It might have been. If it was, I fucked up even worse than I thought.'

'Fucked up what?'

Cloud took a deep breath.

* * *

It took hours, but he managed to sum up two years of re-lived life to Tifa in a way that she could understand, despite all of his pausing and backtracking.

'Well,' she said eventually, 'I think I believe you.'

Cloud managed a very thin smile.

'Either that,' she added, 'or you had the most vivid, detailed hallucination ever.'

'Wouldn't be the first time,' Cloud muttered, but she either didn't hear or chose to ignore him.

'You think you failed?'

Cloud lifted his arms in a helpless gesture.

'Nothing's changed. I remember what life was like the last time, and everything is the same. Sephiroth, Zack and Aerith are dead. Nibelheim was destroyed. Sephiroth came back and nearly killed everyone all over again. I went crazy, you fixed me, and we beat Sephiroth and Shinra was destroyed. That all sounds familiar, right?'

'Pretty much.'

'So I must have failed.'

Tifa thought for a moment, and Cloud sat in miserable silence. He would almost have wanted to go back up to the Shinra Headquarters and try again, if it weren't for the fact that he was certain he would fail again. Or the fact that the materia accelerator had blown up. He still didn't know which life to change, but maybe if he concentrated on Aerith this time, instead of on Sephiroth…

'No,' Tifa said softly, 'I don't think you did.'

* * *

Sector Five hadn't escaped the damage from Jenova's meteor, but Aerith's church was somehow, miraculously, still standing. It was dusty inside, and poorly kept, but really it seemed in no worse a state of disrepair than it had the day Cloud had fallen through the ceiling. The flowers were even still growing in front of the pews. They had become tangled with weeds from lack of care.

'I'm going to check the perimeter for monsters,' Tifa said. Although there hadn't actually been any monster attacks in Edge since they'd shut the malfunctioning reactor down, they liked to keep their eyes open. Which going down into the old, broken city to look for anything. 'Stay here.'

'Yes, I'll sit here and wait the monsters to come after _me_,' Cloud muttered, dropping onto one of the pews. It had been another week before he'd had the energy to get out of the house, and that was only at Tifa's insistence. Within a few days she had gone from concernedly keeping Cloud in bed to practically bullying him out the door.

'You do that,' Tifa said firmly, and he winced because he hadn't actually expected her to hear him.

Despite this determination to get him up and out, Cloud could feel Tifa's eyes burning on him whenever she thought he wasn't looking, and she'd had him sit out on half of the battles they'd encountered under the excuse of wanting to 'practise alone'. Cloud just wished she'd make up her mind as to whether she thought he was sick or not.

He stayed in his seat for several minutes, and then started glancing between his watch and the door. Tifa was taking an awfully long time walking around the church. He wondered if she was hurt, but he couldn't hear any shouting and he was sure she wouldn't have gone so far he couldn't hear her. She was more sensible than that. Well, she was _now_, anyway. Having the shit kicked out of you at fifteen years old in a one-on-one with Sephiroth with no one around to help was probably enough to make anyone re-evaluate their combat tactics.

After ten minutes, he got bored of waiting and went over to the flowers to pick out some of the weeds. Aerith would have had a fit if she'd known her flowers had been left uncared for like this. The memory of Sephiroth plucking dandelions out from around Aerith's white and yellow flowers made him chuckle, but then the laugh wedged in his throat like a rubber ball and made it hard to breathe.

Tifa still hadn't returned by the time Cloud had evicted the weeds – they had stubbornly taken one of two of Aerith's flowers with them as collateral damage – and he started to wander aimlessly around the church. How had Aerith spent so much time in here, all alone? It was maddening.

He leaned against the doorframe and peered outside. No sign of Tifa. He wondered what in the world she was doing. Maybe she'd found another orphan to take home with them, he thought, not entirely sarcastically. There were a lot of orphans these days.

'Thank you for doing that, Cloud.'

He spun around. Aerith smiled at him from the edge of the flowerbed.

'I know the church is a long way from home now,' she said. 'Will you take some of the flowers home, and plant them there? Then you can look after them better.'

'Aerith?' he said. She giggled, making her chestnut hair bounce around her face.

'It's me,' she said. Cloud took a step towards her, but she hurried back and put her hands up.

'No, don't come closer.'

She bent down and touched one of the flowers. Her fingers passed right through the petals without connecting to them. Cloud realised that she had actually walked backwards into her flowerbed without disturbing them. One poked up through her leather boot.

'You can't touch me.' She looked up. 'See?'

Cloud didn't come any closer. He went down on his knees instead. He wasn't sure his legs were going to hold him anyway.

'I thought…'

'You thought you'd saved me,' Aerith said, every word a sound of sympathy. 'Oh Cloud, I'm so sorry, but it wasn't my life you changed. You barely even knew me.'

'I didn't change _anything_.'

'Cloud…'

'Send me back.'

Aerith hesitated, and Cloud jumped back up on his feet and took a few steps closer to her, ignoring the way she drew back.

'Send me back! I'll do it again; I'll do it better!' He swallowed. 'Please.'

'Even if I could send you back again, it wouldn't make any difference,' Aerith said. 'You couldn't do any better than you already did.'

'But—'

'You weren't even aware that you were doing it. You were so busy concentrating on the big things – the things you couldn't control – you didn't stop to notice all of the little things you were doing along the way.'

Cloud realised his mouth was open, and he closed it.

'You were changing one life,' Aerith said softly. 'Just a tiny bit, every day.'

'But you still died,' Cloud said. '_Zack_ still died. I failed.'

'If saving our lives was all that mattered then yes: you did fail.'

Cloud squeezed his eyes shut. Hearing it from Aerith was somehow worse than hearing it in his own head. Thinking that he'd failed was like a hand squeezing his heart. Having Aerith tell him so was like having his heart speared on a pike.

'But,' Aerith said, 'that's not all that mattered.'

Cloud opened his eyes, but remained tense. She couldn't touch him, but for some reason he felt as though he was about to be slapped.

'Zack and I died young, but we had good lives. Bad things happened to us now and again, but we loved living. We had enough good in our lives that we didn't feel cheated when they ended.

'You went back in time to _change_ one life, not to save it. And change one life you did: one life that dearly needed changing. It was different this time.' Aerith smiled. 'He had Zack, and me… and he had you.'

Cloud baulked.

'Se-Sephiroth?'

Suddenly his vision of the church around seemed to become clearer. It took him a moment to realise that, actually, he was seeing the church as it had been before Meteor. There was no dust on the floor or the pews, and the flowerbed was perfectly kept. It only looked clearer because all of the dirt had been driven away.

'You didn't even know him before, and because you didn't you couldn't see exactly how much of his life you changed in those two short years,' Aerith said. She stepped aside, and Cloud instinctively leaped back from Sephiroth.

The SOLDIER didn't look up. He was focused on the flowerbeds, busily tugging up some tiny weeds that Cloud could barely see. Cloud took a wary step forward and waved his arm, but Sephiroth continued at his work, oblivious to Cloud's presence. The longer he looked, the more Cloud felt that he could see through the cleanliness and even through Sephiroth, to the church as it would be in the future. This was only a vision. Aerith was showing him the past, but she hadn't taken him back.

Aerith turned to Sephiroth and her pink dress melted away into a white blouse and a blue skirt: whatever clothes she had been wearing that day.

'—_I swear, those two cause me more trouble than the other departments have altogether,'_ Sephiroth was saying.

'_I don't know,'_ Aerith said to him, and it seemed that she could no longer see Cloud, because her back was turned to him completely and all of her attention was on the apparition before her. _'The Turks have to put up with Reno. Zack's told me stories.'_

Sephiroth snorted.

'_Have you noticed that Zack is almost always _in_ those stories, usually dragging Cloud along with him? I get two troublemakers for the Turks' one.'_

'_Well, why don't you leave?'_ Aerith teased. _'Run away in the night. I won't tell them.'_

Sephiroth smiled, which to Cloud was a sight so rare he wanted to take a photograph, but Aerith seemed unsurprised by the expression.

'_They're worth the trouble,'_ he said.

He faded away, and Aerith's pink dress came back into place, along with all of the dust and debris around the church. She looked back to Cloud.

'But—' Cloud stuttered, '—I didn't matter! He already knew Zack anyway. I didn't change anything that Zack didn't—'

'Zack barely knew Sephiroth before you came along,' Aerith said. 'They called each other "war buddies", but that didn't mean much. They fought together, and then went their separate ways: Zack to me, and to his other friends in Midgar; Sephiroth to an empty training room.

'He still died,' she said. 'We all did, and there was nothing you could do to change that, because our deaths all had an impact on more than one person. But this time, you gave someone – just _one person_ – a few good things, a few things worth being alive to see, before the bad things happened. You changed one life. And that's what mattered.'

Cloud's shoulder's sagged, but not out of despair or disappointment. The tension had left his body, like a heavy weight he hadn't even realised he was carrying. No wonder he had felt so tired.

'Thank you,' he said. Aerith chuckled, and said,

'I always could make you see sense,' before she disappeared.

* * *

Tifa came back half an hour later, with no cuts or bruises to suggest she'd run into trouble. She looked a little tired, but that was probably because she'd spent the last hour and a half walking around and around Sector Five in circles.

'Did the monsters come?' she said. Cloud, who was carefully levering a few of Aerith's flowers out of the flowerbed from their roots, looked up from his work and smiled.

'Nope,' he said. He pointed to his selection of flowers. 'We need to plant some of these at home.'

* * *

'_The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice-versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things.'_

* * *

**[AN:** This is not quite the end! Not yet. I still have one more little chapter to post.

EDIT: Another note I forgot to mention: Aerith's ghost appearing in the church was not something I just whipped out of my arse for exposition's sake. There's a point in FFVII after Aerith's death where, if you visit the church and stand in the right place, her 'ghost' will appear, tending the flowers. Her appearance here was an intentional reference to that - just Google 'Aerith's Ghost glitch' to read about how to do it.**]**


	14. The Answer

**Chapter Fourteen**

_'Every time you see them happy, you remember how sad they're going to be, and it breaks your heart. Because what's the point of them being happy now, if they're going to be sad later? The answer is, of course, because they're going to be sad later.'_

'Are you sure about going up there alone?' Tifa asked. 'What if you get attacked or you hurt yourself—'

'I have my PHS,' Cloud said firmly. 'I'll call you if I find trouble.'

'Call me when you get to the tower,' Tifa said. 'And call me on your way back!'

'Yes, Mother,' Cloud smirked. Tifa gave him a playful slap with the back of her hand, and finally let him go out of the door.

He took a long breath through his nose before he started to walk, smelling the sweetness of Aerith's flowers. They sat, bright and cheerful, in little boxes by the windows and hanging baskets either side of the door. Originally, he and Tifa had only meant to bring a few of them home, but they had exploded all around the bar, scattering themselves around the foundations and creating their own little garden in front of the building. Tifa and Cloud gave away cuttings to anyone who wanted them. Within a few months, flower pots and boxes had become a common sight in Edge.

Cloud had been back to Aerith's church a few times since he'd come back to his own time, but he'd never seen her again.

'You brought flowers to the people of Midgar, just like you wanted,' he said once, to the empty room. 'I mean, the old city got blown up first but I think it still counts.'

His attempts to coax Aerith back had been fruitless. She probably knew about the flowers anyway, he thought.

Leaving the city of Edge behind, Cloud made his way across the desert to Midgar. It was still strange, sometimes, to see the city like this. In the past, Midgar had felt like a dark, proud monster that swallowed anyone who entered. Now he could walk freely among the monster's bones.

Alone and quiet, Cloud clambered up to the Shinra Headquarters as a leisurely pace and slipped into the broken building unhindered.

For the walk up to Floor 30, he put on a pair of mental blinkers. If he didn't look around at the destruction, it wouldn't hurt. Staying focused was the most important thing. He had a job to do, and then he had a home to get back to. _Don't look._

All of the little lights in the console room were still blinking in their various colours, which was a good sign. He scanned over them, reading the numbers and the dials with a fixed expression, barely glancing up to shift along to the next console.

He took his PHS from his pocket and picked Tifa's name out of his contacts. She picked up before the first ring had finished.

'Is everything all right?' She sounded like she'd done nothing all morning but sit wringing her hands.

'Everything's perfect,' he replied. 'No signs of anything shutting down again. I think we're all set.'

'Okay,' Tifa barely sounded relieved. 'Hurry home, okay?'

'I'll see you soon,' he promised, and hung up.

Finally, with his work done, lifted his head and allowed himself to take everything in. This time around, the decay should have been all the more depressing for his more recent memories of the building's splendour, but for some reason he felt none of the miserable pangs he'd expected.

Dust swirled and clouded around his shoes as he walked over to the Materia Accelerator room and switched on the light. The machine was a black, twisted husk; the tubes coiled in on themselves in loops and knots. Cloud hadn't expected to be able to use it again – he'd felt the force of that explosion first hand, after all – but he had wanted to see it, nonetheless. It was something of a comfort to know that the machine was still there, even if it was utterly destroyed.

Cloud looked a little closer at the darkness. There in the wreckage, glinting faintly. He flicked the light off and, yes, there was definitely something in there, glowing. It was such a pale light, he was surprised he'd noticed it at all.

He dropped down from the platform and started to pick his way through the torn and twisted machine towards the little light. He had to crawl on his belly to scoop it out from under a hunk of charred scrap.

It was a materia: tiny, slightly misshapen and half coated in soot, but still undeniably a materia.

Cloud turned it over and over in his hands, and then rubbed the dirt from it on his sleeve. He wandered all the way back to the platform with it, chewing on the inside of his mouth as he thought about what to do with it; about the chance that it might be the materia that had sent him back in time.

He climbed back up on the platform and then sat on its edge, legs hanging over. He squeezed the materia in his fist and tried to call the power out of it.

The light in his fingers sputtered and died.

'Hah,' Cloud said. It wasn't really a laugh and it wasn't quite a sigh of disappointment either. One-time use only. He'd thought it might be; no wonder Shinra had pulled their money out of the project in favour of other methods of combining materia. Who wanted a weapon they could only use once in a battle?

He pocketed the little ball, now dull as a rock, and hopped up. Tifa wanted him home, and that was precisely where he intended to go.

Upon stepping back into the staircase, though, Cloud had another thought. He hesitated a moment, and then turned determinedly away from the stairs leading down and marched up towards the SOLDIER offices.

It was a stupid thing to do, really. Sephiroth had been officially 'retired' for years before the headquarters had been hit; there was really no reason why his office would have been maintained. Cloud would have been surprised if they hadn't cleaned the place out and thrown all of Sephiroth's belongings in the sewer.

Except that Sephiroth had been Midgar's hero and Shinra's poster boy for years. He had been the face of the company's glory days.

Cloud had to hack the door hinges apart with his sword before he could kick the door down.

The hallway that he had paced so frequently with letters and errands for his boss and his friends was eerily quiet. In his mind, he could hear the whispers of Zack's laughter and the ghostly scratching of Sephiroth's pen signing his soul away on page after page of field reports. When he scraped at the grime with the sole of his shoe, he could still see the faint marks of chocobo prints in the carpet. Zack and Reno had raced the birds through this corridor so many times, the janitors had despaired of ever cleaning them off.

Cloud stopped again because, though someone had tried to pull them out, he could see where a very unimpressed cactuar had embedded its spines in the wall. Zack had caught the pota pota blast right in the face and had to go to the infirmary for days to have the needles picked out of his forehead. Sephiroth had given him no sympathy. It was what he'd deserved, he said, for trying to keep the damn thing as a pet.

Sephiroth's office door was closed, but it opened without resistance when Cloud pushed it. He prepared himself for how utterly different the room would look. It would probably have been redecorated; the furniture either replaced or moved around to suit someone else's comforts.

It was the same.

Every inch of the room, excepting the fact everything had clearly been thrown around under Meteor and the subsequent neglect and, was just the same as it had been when Sephiroth had been alive. Even the hooks for Masamune were still sat up on the wall, although the sword had not sat there in years.

Now Cloud felt the ache that he had been expecting, like a hole opening up in his heart. He actually touched his chest absently, and realised that pain was not so much in his heart as in the scar Masamune had left under his collarbone.

The chair behind the desk had fallen over and slid across the room. Cloud righted it and pushed it back where it belonged.

He plucked the dead materia from his pocket and opened up one of the desk drawers. There was no use in keeping it, and for some reason he thought that it deserved to be here with the rest of his memories, preserved in a place where everything was still the same. Something slid to the front of the drawer as it opened.

It was a little square of paper. Sephiroth had written, in the corner, in his perfectly neat calligraphy: _R, A, Z, C, S: 19.8.2002_. Cloud frowned. He had no idea what Sephiroth had meant by that little code. He turned the paper over, and his frown fell into an open mouth, and then a smile.

The photograph had been taken in a bar, years ago. The corners were slightly crumpled, and the colours were a little faded, but for the most part it was intact. Looking up at him were the faces of Reno, Aerith, Zack, himself and Sephiroth – thus the initials – all sat around one table in a bar together. They were all grinning except for Sephiroth, who seemed to have decided that simply not glaring was enough enthusiasm.

He could hardly believe that Sephiroth had held on to such a cheesy photograph; it seemed entirely unlike him to be so whimsical. Then Cloud found himself grinning even wider. That, he thought, was probably why he'd been keeping it face down in his drawer. No framed pictures of friends on the desk for Shinra's finest: just a quiet little reminder that they were there, nearby, right where he could reach them.

Cloud put the photograph back in the drawer and placed the materia over the top of it. The pain in his chest was gone.

* * *

'So, Zack,' Sephiroth said, sliding into a seat at their table, 'would you mind telling me exactly what kind of top-priority mission takes place in a Sector Two bar?'

'A top secret, undercover one,' Zack said, budging up to make room for the last addition to their party, pushing Cloud, Aerith and Reno along like dominoes. 'And in that vein, I told you not to wear all of that leather shit. You were supposed to come in civilian clothing.'

Sephiroth looked down at himself.

'I'm not wearing my coat.'

'Yes you are. You just took the armour off the shoulders. And "civilian clothing" generally means "colours".'

'I don't like colours.' Sephiroth scowled.

'Stop being a miserable bastard and drink.' Zack slid a bottle of beer across the table towards him. Sephiroth looked at it, looked at everyone else, and resignedly flicked the metal cap off with his thumb.

'You _do_ know that, with all the mako in my blood, it's going to take thirty these to get me drunk?' Sephiroth said conversationally. Zack shrugged.

'It takes me longer than Reno. That's why we buy our own drinks after the first round.'

'Also,' Sephiroth added, 'Cloud is a minor and therefore should not be drinking alcohol, and buying it for him is considered a felony in every sector in Midgar.'

'I've got lemonade,' Cloud replied, sounding decidedly unhappy about it.

'Lemonade, plus,' Zack said, passing a flat metal flask to Cloud under the table. Cloud brightened up very suddenly, and his drink slipped below the table for just a few seconds before coming up a few inches fuller than it had been before.

Sephiroth sat back in his chair.

'You dragged me out of my office and away from a very important report about our last mission in Junon to watch you, your girlfriend, a Turk and a minor get drunk in the last sector that will accept Reno's credit card?' he said.

'Nowhere accepts Reno's credit card,' Zack said. 'This is a _mission_; we're charging the drinks on the company card.'

'No.'

'You say that now…'

'_No_.'

'You'll change your mind.'

'No I won't.'

Zack fixed him with an uncharacteristically serious look, like a father staring down at his stroppy toddler.

'Would you rather be up in your office, all alone and drowning in paperwork?'

The corners of Sephiroth's lips twitched into something remarkably close to a smile.

'No.'

When waitress came over a few minutes later to take their empty glasses, Zack handed her a disposable camera.

'It's taken us months to get our friend here out,' he said. 'Help us take evidence!'

She fumbled with the buttons for a while, eyes darting more than once up towards Sephiroth in terror. Eventually, she managed to get it the right way up, stutter,

'S-s-sm-smile,' and take the picture.

'Cheers,' Zack said, taking it back. He nudged Sephiroth. 'I'll give you a copy. You could put it on your desk.'

'A photograph of you on my desk?' Sephiroth said. 'I suppose if nothing else it would help to frighten everyone away…'

Zack ignored his jibe and ordered another round for them all. Cloud looked rather less miserable about his second lemonade, probably because Zack had given him the flask again when he thought Sephiroth wasn't looking.

Four and a half hours later, Aerith had gone home. Cloud and Zack were performing an energetic and tone-deaf rendition of the theme from LOVELESS on the karaoke and Reno was being chased out from behind the bar with a pool cue. Sephiroth stayed behind to finish his fifteenth beer and to catch Cloud when he stumbled off of the stage.

The paperwork could wait.

* * *

**[AN:** And that would, in fact, be the end. I hope it wasn't as depressing as some of you were worrying, but I really couldn't throw in a cheesily happy ending for what I had in mind. I never wanted Cloud to fix everything - just to make a few things things that little bit better.

An enormous thank you to everyone who's read and/or reviewed this, especially my frequent commenters. _The Answer_ has received so much more kindness and attention than I expected, and you've really all warmed my heart with your messages. I'm not going to promise anything, but I do have some other ideas mulling around: mainly a few lighthearted one-shots, based on this universe, of Zack and Reno having shenanigans. There are some other fandoms I'll be playing with, too, but that'll come as it comes! Thank you all again!**]**


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